JAKARTA, Feb. 19 (Xinhua) -- Indonesia planned to intensify coordination between related institutions to assure the upcoming 2018 Asian Games (Asiad) free from impacts of forest fire as part of the Indonesia's hosting city was located in around areas that saw forest fire in the past years, an official said here on Monday.
"The most area that needs more attention was South Sumatra. Therefore we would take preliminary moves so as to better anticipate the reoccurrence of forest fire in the province," Chief Secretary of Indonesia's Meteorology, Climatology and Geophysics Agency (BMKG) Widada Sulistya said here.
The 2018 Asiad was scheduled to be held in Indonesia's two cities of Jakarta and South Sumatra province capital of Palembang from August 18 to September 2 this year.
BMKG has initially identified nine provinces in the country that has higher possibilities to encounter another forest fire this year.
Among the factors to prompt the forest fire in those provinces was the low rain intensity with some of those province did not see rain in the last 20 days, he said.
Those province were Aceh, North Sumatra, West Sumatra, Riau, Jambi, South Sumatra, West Kalimantan, North Kalimantan and East Kalimantan.
He said that hotspots have been detected from February 1 to 18 in West Kalimantan and Riau provinces at 52 and 35 ones respectively.
The two provinces have already imposed the forest fire emergency status related to the expanding hotspots, he added.
Indonesia saw annual forest fires which mostly were man made, conducted by plantation owners to expand their plantation areas in those provinces. They simply torched up woods in the forests in doing so.
The nation saw deadly massive forest fire in 2015 that took up 2.6 million hectares of forest and agriculture areas. Indonesian authorities saw 21,929 hotspots during the forest fire period at that time.
After applying concrete measures, including legal punishments for those committed in forest fire, Indonesia saw lower areas affected by forest fires in 2016 and 2017, stood at 450 hectares and 160 hectares respectively, according to official data.
