Wildfires have begun spreading near Indonesia’s under-construction new capital, prompting project authorities to urge the disaster mitigation agency to carry out cloud-seeding and water-bombing operations, officials said.
Indonesia has intensified efforts to contain haze in six provinces hit the hardest by forest and land fires in Borneo and Sumatra islands, which so far have reached 73,311 hectares.
Wildfires have been raging in a number of spots on Borneo Island, but the eastern part, where the new capital, Nusantara, is located, has been relatively safe in the weeks since the fires began to worsen with the onset of the dry season in July.
Now, however, fires have spread to some areas around the capital, prompting the request for action from the authority overseeing the project, said Agus Riyanto, director for emergency response at the disaster mitigation agency.
Disaster response and mitigation teams in the Southeast Asian archipelago are facing the most challenging dry season in a decade, exacerbated by a ‘super El Nino’ phenomenon.
The biggest of the fires in the new capital territory, Agus said, was at a forest park at Bukit Suharto, or Suharto Hill, named after the autocratic former president, where around 300 hectares have burned.
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