Australia to join Indonesia’s wildfire waterbombing operations, disaster agency says

JAKARTA, Nov 5 (Reuters) – Australia will join Indonesia’s waterbombing operations to help put out fires that have been raging for months, a government agency said on Thursday, days after a helicopter crashed during a firefighting mission on Borneo island, killing one person and injuring several others.

• Australia’s New South Wales Rural Fire Service has dispatched one C-130 Hercules and a Cessna Citation aircraft to support Indonesia, with both expected to join the firefighting operations from November 6 to 12, Indonesia’s disaster mitigation agency BNPB said in a statement.

• Indonesia has been battling its most intense wildfires in 11 years, with large swathes of land scorched, mainly on the islands of Sumatra, Borneo and Papua.

• Fire and haze have caused over 400,000 cases of acute respiratory infections in seven provinces as of November 2, Health Ministry data showed.

• Indonesia has continued to make “massive efforts” to control the fires, including waterbombing and cloud seeding operations, and the engagement of foreign assistance, Kristomei Sianturi, head of the disaster mitigation agency, said in the statement.

• “The support includes a Large Air Tanker aircraft capable of dropping up to 15,000 litres of water per sortie, with an estimated capacity of up to six sorties per day,” said Australian Ambassador Roderick Bruce Brazier in the same statement.

• On Wednesday, a waterbombing helicopter crashed in Central Kalimantan on Borneo island, killing one of the crew and injuring five others, the military said in a statement. Two remaining officers have yet to be evacuated, it added.

(Reporting by Fransiska Nangoy, Ananda Teresia; Editing by David Stanway)

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