JAKARTA: Forest fires have swept across Batam in Riau Islands in recent days, threatening critical infrastructure in the region and producing haze that has disrupted air travel.
Over the weekend, fires spread through a forest near the Batu Besar electricity substation in the provincial capital Batam, which supplies power to thousands of homes across the city.
Spokesperson for the Batam office of the state-owned utility PLN, Yoga Perdana Sulastana said the fire first broke out on Saturday and quickly advanced toward the facility.
“We immediately contacted the police and firefighters, who managed to extinguish the fire by 10pm on Saturday. However, another fire broke out in a nearby area on Sunday afternoon,” he told The Jakarta Post on Monday (March 23).
Yoga added that the second fire was less intense than the first, but the risk of further blaze remains high due to the ongoing extreme heat in Batam.
As of Monday morning, firefighting teams remained on standby around the buffer zone of the Batu Besar substation.
As a short-term precaution, PLN Batam officials, together with local police, have been patrolling nearby residential areas to educate residents on the dangers of burning household waste or clearing land with fire.
Authorities warned that even a small spark could ignite a major blaze amid the region’s drying vegetation.
“We are closely monitoring the situation. If the fire reaches the substation, it could have serious consequences for Batam’s entire electricity system,” Yoga said.
The forest fire near the Batu Besar electricity substation has also affected visibility at Hang Nadim International Airport, which is located only 5km away. Data from the local Meteorology, Climatology, and Geophysics Agency (BMKG) showed that visibility briefly dropped to four kilometres on Saturday, below the normal range of seven to 10km.
Authorities said the reduced visibility caused only minor disruptions during takeoff and landing, and no flights to or from Batam were diverted or canceled.
Hendriana Gustin, head of the Batam Fire and Rescue Agency, said that between January and February, the city recorded 47 fire incidents. Of these, 27 involved forest fires while the remainder were building or residential fires.
“The figure marks a sharp increase from the same period in 2025, which recorded just 20 incidents,” he said.
Hendriana added that the January-February fires alone accounted for 70 per cent of all fire incidents reported in Batam in the first half of 2025, which totaled 68 cases.
Since the start of the year, forest fires have swept across nearly all 12 districts in the city, burning more than 13 hectares of land, including a local protected forest. The BMKG has urged regions across Indonesia to remain vigilant against forest fires amid forecasts of drier-than-normal weather this year.
BMKG head Teuku Faisal Fathani said that in 2025, the country’s weather was influenced by a weak La Nina at the start and end of the year, resulting in a relatively wetter dry season.
“However, this year the El Nino–Southern Oscillation [ENSO] and the Indian Ocean Dipole are expected to remain in neutral phases, with neither La Nina nor El Nino occurring. These neutral conditions indicate rainfall will be lower than last year and even slightly below the 30-year climatological average,” he said on March 5.
“This means we must prepare, as the threat of forest and land fires will be greater this year due to drier conditions,” Faisal added.
Faisal said most of the archipelago is expected to enter the peak dry season between June and August.
However, some equatorial regions, such as Riau, Jambi and West Kalimantan, are already experiencing a “mini dry season” with reduced rainfall and rising temperatures which increase the risk of forest fire. - The Jakarta Post/ANN
