REPUBLIKA.CO.ID, JAKARTA -- Forest and land fires from June to October 2015 took financial loss up to Rp 221 trillion. The amount was beyond calculation of damages in health, education, germplasm, carbon emissions and other sector. The loss was higher compared to a similar incident in 1997, in which it reached Rp 60 trillion.
As is known, in 2015 forest fires occurred in Jambi, Riau, South Sumatra, South Kalimantan, West Kalimantan and East Kalimantan. The cause was mostly poor management of peat land and drought caused by El Nino.
"This loss is equivalent to 1.5 percent of national gross domestic product. It means the forest fires hamper the pace of development," said Head of Data and Information and Public Relations of National Disaster Management Agency (BNPB), Sutopo Purwo Nugroho, in the Press Conference for Disaster Management Evaluation 2015 and Disaster Prediction in 2016.
BNPB has spent Rp 720 billion for fire extinguisher. These costs were different with costs that were spent by Ministry of Environment and Forests (KLHK), Ministry of Public Works and Public Housing (Kemenpupera) and the Ministry of Health.
Efforts that have been made by BNPB were conducting water bomb with 17 helicopters and three fixed wing.
"We also conduct artificial rain with help of four aircraft," Sutopo added.
Moreover, more than 22 thousand personnel were deployed. Along with that, enforcement of the law against forest burning was also made.
The forest fires caused 24 people died, more than 600 thousand people infected with Upper Respiratory Infection (ISPA), 60 million people are exposed to smoke and 2.61 million hectares of forest burnt.
Of 2.61 million hectares of land that were burnt, 33 percent of them were peatland area of 869,754 hectares. While, fires in mineral land reached 1,741,657 hectares or 67 percent.
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