100 New Fires A Day Spread Across Indonesian Borneo - Jakarta Post

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"Forest fires and hot spots were spreading at an alarming rate across Indonesian Borneo, at a rate of over a hundred a day over the last week, a senior official from the Office of the State Ministry of Environment said on Sunday.

"The latest report on Saturday from our staff in West, Central and East Kalimantan says that the hot spots have reached 400 while on Thursday and Friday hot spots were only 200 and 300 respectively," the Deputy Minister for Ecosystem Maintenance Sudariyono told The Jakarta Post on Sunday. He added that the quick spread of fires was caused by strong winds in some areas, which pushed the fires to the east from West Kalimantan to the forested areas of Central Kalimantan and East Kalimantan.

Sudariyono said that local ministry officials together with local plantation and forest agencies had been trying to stem the spread of the fires. "However, we have not been very successful because we don't have enough personnel to cover such a wide area," he said. He said his office had received reports that parts of West, Central and East Kalimantan, were blanketed by smoky haze. He added that the haze could be thicker because land-clearing by setting forest fires continued."

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http://forests.org/articles/reader.asp?linkid=34580