TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - National Disaster Management Agency (BNPB) recorded at least seven cities and regions are having air quality that reaches dangerous level due to haze. These include Pekanbaru (618.12), Jambi (592.74), Palembang (591.33), and Palangkaraya (1,347.68), among others.
“This what makes 503 thousand people suffer ISPA (acute respiratory infection),” BNPB Data Chief Sutopo Nugroho told Tempo on Saturday, October 24.
Other regions such as Pontianak, Banjarbaru and Samarinda where the index hits 81.73, 81.67 and 118 each, are categorized being in medium level.
The haze also reduces visibility in the affected areas. in Pekanbaru, for example, visibility is only 300 meters. while in Padang, Jambi and Palembang, the visibility reaches 1,000 meters, 600 meters and 700 meters each.
In Kalimantan, Palangkaraya sees worst visibility up to only 100 meters while in Ketapang it is 400 meters.
Terra & Aqua images show there are 224 hot spots across regions in Sumatra mostly in South Sumatra (199 spots). More hotspots are detected in Kalimantan amounting 1,306 hot spots in total. Central Kalimantan has the most hot spots amounting to 697 spots.
BNPB and TNI continue to deploy thousands of joint personnel and dozens of aircraft in a bid to extinguish the hot spots.
AVIT HIDAYAT
