The Agency for Meteorology, Climatology and Geophysics (BMKG) estimates that the beginning of the rainy season will fall on late November to early December 2019. The current dry season is expected to continue in the next two or three months.

“The peak of the dry season is August-September. While it is the peak of dry season, it does not mean that the drought come to the end stop immediately; we will still have prolonged draught in September and October with little rain during the next two to three months,” said Adi of MKG as quoted from Antara.

He explained that currently around 92 percent of area in Indonesia is experiencing drought. There are even some areas that experience days without extreme rain; that is no rain for more than 60 days, such as Java, Bali and Nusa Tenggara.

“Based on BMKG monitoring until the beginning of August 2019, some regions have experienced extreme level meteorological drought where there. We have a record of areas without rains for 60 to 90 days. This condition will certainly leave a further impact on agricultural drought and the lack of clean water for the community. In addition, there has been higher threat of crop failure for rain-fed agricultural areas, “he said.

The condition also became a concern for the management of PT DAHANA (Persero). Prolonged drought conditions cause the potential land fires that can threaten company production facilities that are sensitive to fire.

In order to overcome the emergence of fatalities and large losses during a fire disaster, PT Dahana (Persero) held a simulation and training in the use of Light Fire Extinguishers (APAR).

The training on the use of APAR was held on Thursday, August 22, 2019 at the Laboratory of PT DAHANA (Persero) and was attended by DAHANA laboratory employee representatives . Speaker of the training was Andri Sudaryadi, Commander of the DAHANA Fire FighterTeam.

Didin Wahyudin, Head of Section for Service of Security Administration of PT DAHANA (Persero) explained that this time the use of fire extinguisher training was initially intended for employees working in Ring 1. Area Ring 1 of DAHANA was vulnerable to hotspots due to the large number of dried shrubs during the current prolonged dry season.

“Hopefully, every DAHANA employee will be able to use fire extinguisher for initial countermeasure in the event of fire so that large and widespread fire disaster can be avoided,” Didin explained.