Smog Persists Despite Rains, One Airport Closed
11/1/97
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Headline: Smog Persists Despite Rains, One Airport Closed
Source: Reuters
Date: 11/1/97
Author: Lewa Pardomuan
Copyright: Reuters Limited 1997
JAKARTA (Reuters) - Sporadic rains helped clear the skies over several
Indonesian cities on Thursday, but smog from bush and forest fires
persisted over large areas of the country, government officials said.
They said 17 cities were covered with smog, but visibility improved in a
number of places such as Padang and Palembang on Sumatra island due to
rain.
"There is only one airport closed so far today, compared with four or five
in the previous days. Sporadic rains have helped improve visibility," said
an official at the forest fire coordinating centre of the Environmental
Impact Management Agency (Bapedal) in Jakarta.
He said smog was concentrated in the Sumatran provinces of Riau, Jambi,
South Sumatra and Lampung, and on Kalimantan, on the Indonesian side of
Borneo island.
"To sum up, smog is still there but the visibility has improved in a
number of cities," he added.
Smog from bush and forest fires, many of them deliberately lit to clear
land for planting, has affected large parts of Southeast Asia for several
months, especially Malaysia and Singapore.
Recent monsoon rains have helped clear the haze away from Singapore and
Malaysia. On Thursday, both countries were experiencing only slight haze,
meteorological officials said.
Environmental and forestry experts said the worst smog in Kalimantan was
coming from burning peat bog which the government had been clearing for a
massive rice-planting project. The peat was giving off noxious carbon
fumes which have triggered health alerts through the region.
A meteorological department official in Colombbo said on Thursday that
smoke from bush fires in Indonesia had begun drifting over parts of Sri
Lanka.
"We detected it on Saturday when it was noticed that visibility had
reduced," deputy meteorological director Jayatilleke Banda told Reuters.
"The condition has gradually improved. But because the winds are blowing
from east to west, there are possibilities that smog which is still
hanging over the Bay of Bengal could drift over Sri Lanka," Banda said.
A meteorology official in Jakarta confirmed winds were blowing from east
to west in the Indonesian archipelago.
The head of a U.N. weather task force said in Geneva on Wednesday
Indonesia continued to show very strong signals of the freak El Nino
weather pattern, which is forecast to continue suppressing seriously
delayed Monsoon rains.
Fredrick Semazzi, who heads an "El Nino" task force set up last month by
the U.N. World Meteorological Organisation to co-ordinate efforts in
dealing with the climatic havoc, said recent sporadic rainfall in parts of
Indonesia was only intermittent.
"Our scientific models show no evidence of a persistent and coherent
rainfall in Indonesia, although we are continuing to monitor the situation
closely," he told Reuters.
Indonesian meteorologists have said rainy season had started on the
northern part of Sumatra island, but it would only begin in the rest of
the archipelago either in December or January.