REPUBLIKA.CO.ID, BANJARMASIN  --  Indonesia's Minister of Forestry and Environment Siti Nurbaya has said the country has been placed under emergency with regards to anticipating and preventing the impact of smoke emanating from forest and land fires.

She made the statement during a visit to the Tanah Laut district in South Kalimantan, adding that her office would keep monitoring forest and land fires in the country.

"In the morning, afternoon and evening, we kept monitoring the situation and as soon as we detected a fire, we immediately acted to put it out. As a result, the number of fires this year has dropped sharply by 70 to 90 percent," she said.

The number of hot spots in Jambi and West Kalimantan has dropped by 90 percent and so have the spots in South Kalimantan and other regions, she added.

However, from July to August, there has been a hike in the number of hot spots, which doubled, especially in Riau and West Kalimantan, to make the fire fighting coordinating team busy.

She said all members of the team from the police, the military, fire fighter agencies and other agencies have been forced to conduct fire fighting in the region three to five days in a row to keep the fires from spreading.

In Riau, she said the team had dropped up to 45 million liters of water to extinguish the fires and in South Sumatra three million liters had been spent and efforts are still continuing to fight fires in West Kalimantan and Jambi.

The number of hot spots has increased, based on the monitoring of the Meteorology, Geophysics and Climatology Agency (BMKG), with the air drought being below 100 millimeters or it has been very dry and the drought in Sumatra and surrounding areas has been below 50 millimeters, indicating that it is very dry and therefore alertness is needed, she said.

It is predicted that a dry season with a drought level below 100 millimeters will last until the middle of September and only at the end of September will it start becoming wet.

"This means all parties must be really alert in case of forest or land fires so that a haze problem does not arise again," she added.

The minister also visited South Kalimantan to check the readiness of forest fire fighting team in Tanah Laut.

Almost all districts and cities in South Kalimantan have set up command posts to deal with possible forest and land fires.

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