Jakarta, Sept 5 (Antara) - Residents of Sumatra's Jambi Province have over the past few days complained of forest fire-triggered haze that reduced visibility to 300 meters and forced Jambi airport to shut down.
"Jambi is floating on smokes," Andi Amirullah, a resident of Muaro Bungo District, said on his Facebook wall on Friday. Using face masks, Amirullah advised his colleagues to postpone any planned visit to Jambi as local people are now forced to use face masks to avoid being choked.
Antara Correspondent Azhari reported on Thursday choking haze blanketed Jambi City. Schools were ordered to close, yet locals still seemed to be doing activities normally.
Traffic in Jambi City was also still normal despite limited visibility.
However, Jambi's Sultan Thaha Syaifudin Airport continued to remain shut on Friday as thick smoke blanketed the province.
By Friday evening, 12 flights from the airport were cancelled due to the smoke, the airport's Operations Chief, Parolan Simanjuntak, said.
"By Friday evening, not a single plane had landed at the Sulthan Thaha Airport in Jambi and several flights were cancelled. This morning, only the Jakarta-bound Garuda plane flew out of the airport after being parked there overnight," he said.
Satellite imagery picked up more than 600 fire hotspots across Sumatra on Wednesday with the provinces of Jambi, Riau and south Sumatra accounting for most of the sightings.
Indonesia's weather agency, the BMKG, detected 229 hotspots in Jambi, 189 in South Sumatra and 178 in Riau, fanning fears that a particularly acute dry season this year could result in a worse-than-usual haze threat from the annual forest fires that flight Sumatra.
Based on the Terra and Aqua satellites' monitoring at 5 a.m. local time on Friday, there were 362 hotspots across Sumatra Island.
Some 173 hotspots were detected in South Sumatra Province, 148 in Jambi, 31 in Riau, eight in Bangka Belitung, and one each in Lampung and West Sumatra.
"Sumatra is burning up ," National Disaster Mitigation Agency (BNPB) spokesman Sutopo Purwo Nugroho was quoted as saying by the Jakarta Globe on Friday.
He argued that the numbers indicated that the fire season in Sumatra this year would be worse than last year or in 2013.
Several airports, including Sultan Syarif Kasim II in Pekanbaru, Riau, Hang Nadim in Batam, Riau Islands and Supadio Airport in West Kalimantan capital of Pontianak, reported disruption to scheduled flights as a result of poor visibility brought about by the haze.
In Jambi, 12 flights were canceled by Friday evening. Normally, the airport caters to 36 flights to and from the airport per day.
Among the airlines flying to the Sulthan Thaha Airport are Garuda Indonesia, Lion Air, Nam Airlines, Sriwijaya Airlines, City Link, and Susi Air.
"Sriwijaya Airlines has cancelled its flights to the airport until September 5, and so has Susi Air. The airlines that were originally slated to fly today are Garuda Indonesia, City Link and Lion Air. But none of them have taken off," Simanjuntak revealed.
The airport operates from morning to night. The last flight from the airport departs at 07.45 p.m. and the last flight arrives at 08.30 p.m.
On Thursday, only one Garuda plane had landed at the airport at 08.30 p.m., Simanjuntak said.
He said visibility at the airport was above the normal limit on Thursday night.
"Visibility was 2,200 meters at 08.00 p.m. But only one plane landed at the airport and no planes took off on Thursday," he said.
In the meantime, Jambi Regional Police Chief Brig. Gen. Lutfi Lubihanto has issued a ban on burning forest and land in Jambi Province.
He announced the ban on Friday after holding a coordination meeting at Jambi Regional Police Headquarters on emergency handling of thick haze that covered Jambi as a result of forest and land fires.
Brig Gen Lutfi Lubihanto signed the announcement during the meeting which was also attended by representatives of a number of companies operating in the province.
"This announcement is in line with the letter of decision of the Jambi governor on the handling of forest and land fires, including the handling by the fast reaction force and team," Lutfi Lubihanto said.
Over the past few days, only a small part of Sumatra Island such as Lampung and Bengkulu Provinces are free from haze.
Haze has engulfed almost all regions in Sumatra and is mostly likely to affect Malaysia and Singapore, according to a meteorology analyst.
"This morning's data shows that almost every province across Sumatra Island has been shrouded by haze, from South Sumatra, Jambi, West Sumatra, Riau, and Medan up to Aceh," Sugarin, the head of the Pekanbaru meteorology station, stated on Friday.***4***
(T.A014/H-YH)
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