TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - West Kalimantan's police chief Brig. Gen. Didi Haryano, has instructed his staffs to arrest the arsonists forest and land fires in every region. Meanwhile, the land and forest fires at Wonodadi Street 2 and Patria Jaya Hamlet have been extinguished by the police along with Regional military command XII and local people in Rasau Jaya last night.
"There were two settlements that were almost burned by the fires there," he said on Sunday.
Didi said regional police and Indonesian Defense Forces (TNI) with local people made efforts to extinguish the fires. Luckily, the fires did not burn the residents' houses.
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Didi revealed there would be many losses related to the fires, such as health problems, sea and air transportation's disturbance because of the smoke.
He had experiences on land and forest fires impact to respiratory infections victims and transportation activity disturbances. He hoped this incident would not happen anymore in West Kalimantan.
Didi expected to cooperate with people in order to prevent land fires.
Forest and land fires started happening in West Kalimantan since this week. According to data of province's Disaster Mitigation Agency (BPBD), there was around 182 of 2,000 villages have been monitored in the land and forest fire movement.
"We expect the assistance from police to prevent and punish the culprits behind the land and forest fires," Head of West Kalimantan's BPBD, TTA Nyarong said.
Nyarong said there was high indication of hot spots in West Kalimantan in 2015. Then, it decreased drastically in 2016 and 2017. He urged the people to prevent the fires before they escalated too far.
ANTARA
