Australia to join Indonesia’s wildfire waterbombing operations

JAKARTA, Nov 5 (Reuters) – Australia will join Indonesia’s waterbombing operations to help put out fires that have been raging for months, a government agency said on Thursday, a day after a helicopter crashed during a firefighting mission, killing three people.

• Australia’s New South Wales Rural Fire Service has dispatched a C-130 Hercules and a Cessna Citation aircraft to support Indonesia in firefighting operations from November 6 to 12, Indonesia’s disaster mitigation agency said in a statement

• Australia’s ambassador to Indonesia, Roderick Bruce Brazier, said the support includes a Large Air Tanker aircraft capable of dropping up to 15,000 litres of water per sortie, with with an estimated capacity of up to six sorties per day

• Indonesia has been battling its most intense wildfires in 11 years, with large swathes of land scorched, mainly on the islands of Sumatra, Borneo and Papua

• An Indonesian waterbombing helicopter crashed on Wednesday in Central Kalimantan, killing three crew and injuring several others, an environment ministry department said on Thursday

• The helicopter was carrying eight crew and crashed while loading water, according to the transport ministry

• Fire and haze has caused more than 400,000 cases of acute respiratory infections in seven Indonesian provinces as of November 2, Health Ministry data showed

• Indonesia is making “massive efforts” to control the fires though waterbombing and cloud seeding operations while engaging foreign assistance, its disaster agency chief Kristomei Sianturi said

(Reporting by Fransiska Nangoy, Ananda Teresia; Editing by David Stanway)