REPUBLIKA.CO.ID, PEKANBARU -- Pekanbaru's meteorology office has detected 52 hotspots in four districts in Riau Province on Thursday.
The districts of Bengkalis had 37 hotspots, Siak 10, Meranti four, and Rokan Hilir one, Sugarin, head of the meteorology office, noted.
Based on the monitoring conducted by the Terra and Aqua satellites, 36 of the 52 hotspots were confirmed to be forest and plantation fires.
Of the 36 hotspots, 29 were found in Bengkalis, six in Siak, and one in Meranti.
Suiswantoro of the Bengkalis disaster mitigation office stated that several personnel had been deployed to tackle the fires.
He said the weather was quite hot in Bengkalis, but so far, there was no haze.
According to the Riau Police, a total area measuring 222.5 hectares (ha), mostly peatland areas in eight districts, were destroyed by fires in early 2016.
"In general, the areas gutted by fires are peatlands," Riau Police spokesman Adjunct Senior Commissioner Guntur Aryo Tejo remarked.
The fire-affected districts were Bengkalis, Siak, Dumai, Pelalawan, Dumai, Rokan Hilir, Indragiri Hilir, and Indragiri Hulu.
In Bengkalis, fires razed 56 ha of peatland area and 70 ha of plantation area belonging to PT Satria Perkasa Agung.
In the districts of Siak and Pelalawan, 53.5 ha and 5 ha of forest areas were respectively razed by the fires.
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