On November 2 more than 21 metric tons of wildland firefighting equipment arrived in Indonesia from the United States to assist firefighters who are dealing with what has been described as “almost certainly the greatest environmental disaster of the 21st century”. Massive wildfires are burning across the 3,100-mile length of the country creating very serious air quality issues. Visibility in some cities has been reduced to about 100 feet. Children are being prepared to be evacuated in warships, deaths have been blamed on the smoke, and in Riau as of September 4 officials reported over 10,133 cases of respiratory infection.
Producers of palm oil in Indonesia frequently set fires to clear land, but the weather effects of El Niño have made the situation far worse than normal, with one estimate that the fires are producing more daily emissions than the entire US economy.
The contributions from the United States to help mitigate this disaster have amounted to four technical experts and 5,000 sets of gloves, shirts, jeans, hand tools, and safety goggles. The shipment, organized by USAID’s Office of U.S. Foreign Disaster Assistance, was described by the U.S. Forest Service as “the largest US international fire supply support ever”.
The USFS put the order together for USAID at their fire cache in Redding, California. It was then transported to Indonesia on a Korean Air aircraft.
is there any satellite imagery of the fires on the net?
Good idea. We posted one here today.