Jakarta: The National Disaster Management Agency (BNPB) has prepared various steps to anticipate the effects of drought due to the El Nino phenomenon. This natural phenomenon is expected to occur in August and September 2023.
Head of BNPB, Lieutenant General TNI Suharyanto, said the first step was to give an appeal to areas that have the potential to witness El Nino. Local governments are asked to ensure sufficient air availability.
"Of course the solution step is to ensure air availability, the method is to bring rain," said Suharyanto in a virtual FMB9ID discussion, Monday, July 31, 2023.
He said BNPB and the Meteorology, Climatology and Geophysics Agency (BMKG) were working together to hold a weather modification technology (TMC) operation to bring rain. Rainwater is expected to fill lakes or ponds.
Suharyanto revealed that BNPB had also prepared new drilled wells to collect the rainwater so that it could be used by people who were thirsty for drought due to El Nino.
The second step is related to anticipation and mitigation of forest and land fires due to extreme hot weather caused by El Nino. This year, BNPB is preparing steps to tackle forest and land fires in six provinces based on the priorities of Presidential Instruction No. 3 of 2020.
The six provinces are South Sumatra, Riau, Jambi, West Kalimantan, South Kalimantan and Central Kalimantan.
"From those provinces, we have prepared a readiness and preparedness call to anticipate this karhutla," he said.
He revealed that the most important thing to handle fires is land operations. Ground troops have been activated and put on alert again considering that in the last three years forest and land fires have been relatively small.
Apart from that, it restores the function of the equipment, which for the past three years has been mostly old and damaged. BNPB will also add the required equipment.
"Then, if the forest and land fire operations get bigger, because we cannot overcome land operations, we have also prepared the last step by carrying out air operations using water bombing helicopters. In the six provinces, 31 helicopters are also available to be used," he said.
In order to monitor the occurrence of fires, he said, all applications owned by the government/institution, TNI/Polri, local government, BNPB, and BMKG have been integrated into one.
"So hopefully with this readiness, if later there is a drought or an enlarged fires we can overcome it," said Suharyanto.
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