Bali declares state of emergency as drought and fires worsen

Bali Disaster Mitigation Agency workers look on as fire razes an area on the slope of Mount Agung in Karangasem on Oct. 1, 2023. -BPBD Bali

JAKARTA (The Jakarta Post/Asia News Network): Acting Bali governor SM Mahendra Jaya has declared a state of emergency on the resort island for the next two weeks following prolonged drought and an uptick in land and forest fires.

The directive was issued on Thursday (Oct 19) in a governor’s circular and impacts all regencies and cities across the province, including Denpasar, Badung, Bangli, Buleleng, Gianyar, Jembrana, Karangasem, Klungkung and Tabanan.

The policy will be enforced until Nov 1 and can be extended or shortened as needed.

The emergency status was declared to help ease access for the deployment of human resources, equipment and other logistics for disaster mitigation, said Made Rentin, head of the Bali Disaster Mitigation Agency (BPBD-Bali).

With the status in force, the provincial administration will be able to instruct other institutions to take an active role in mitigating the disaster.

“The BPBD gains access to all the resources we need to put a handle on the drought and fires,” Rentin told The Jakarta Post on Friday.

On Thursday, acting governor Mahendra suggested that there was no cause for alarm, for the decision to raise the disaster awareness status was made prudently as a means to mobilize resources.

Extreme drought has swept across the tourism-dependent island since July, with at least 113 banjar (traditional hamlets) facing a clean water crisis. The most affected areas include hamlets in Buleleng, Jembrana and Karangasem.

“The drought and clean water crisis may spread to other areas if there is no rainfall in the next few days,” Mahendra said in a meeting with the BNPB in Denpasar, on Thursday.

According to data from the Denpasar bureau of the Meteorology, Climatology and Geophysics Agency (BMKG), three districts across the island have not seen rainfall for 94 consecutive days

The prolonged dry spell in Bali, brought about in part due to the El Niño weather phenomenon, has resulted in droughts but also many forest and land fires, with at least seven forest fires reported between July and October; two in Buleleng, four in Karangasem and one in Bangli.

Three landfill facilities servicing sanitary waste have also caught fire and authorities are still struggling to put out the blaze after more than a week, including at Bali’s biggest landfill in Suwung, Denpasar.

Two other facilities facing down fires are Mandung landfill in Tabanan and Temesi landfill in Gianyar. The landfill fires, if not extinguished, could threaten the health of the communities residing in close proximity, local authorities have warned.

With the state of emergency in place, however, BPBD-Bali’s Rentin was optimistic that the disasters could be immediately mitigated.

National Disaster Mitigation Agency (BNPB) chief Lt. Gen. Suharyanto has promised to deploy more aircraft for weather modification operations to Bali once they are finished putting out fires across Sumatra and Kalimantan, tribunnews.com reported.