Indonesia's military helicopter crashes while extinguishing 'worst forest fire'... 2 dead, 1 missing

In Indonesia, where the worst forest fire in 11 years broke out, a military helicopter crashed while fighting fires, killing two people and leaving one person missing.

According to AFP news agency and Indonesian weekly magazine Tempo on the 5th (local time), a military helicopter crashed in the sea near Kalimantan, central Kalimantan, Borneo the previous day.

Indonesian military authorities said that out of the eight people on board the helicopter, two died and one went missing.

Before the accident, this helicopter took off from the Seruyan region of Central Kalimantan Province and worked to extinguish forest fires in the Tanjung Puting National Park area.

This national park in southern Borneo Island is home to a variety of animals, including the endangered Bornean orangutan.

Military authorities said that the helicopter crashed while floating in the air while pumping seawater to extinguish a fire, and that they are conducting an additional investigation into the specific cause of the accident.

Military authorities said, "So far, the bodies of two (helicopter) passengers have been found and five have been rescued," and "We are searching for one passenger who has not yet been found."

However, the Indonesian Ministry of Transport made a different announcement from the military authorities, saying that the number of deaths due to this accident was three.

AFP reported that the reason for the difference in the number of deaths announced by the Indonesian military and the Ministry of Transportation is not yet known.

Previously, on the 15th of last month, while extinguishing a forest fire in Bromo Tenger Semeru National Park in Probolinggo, East Java Province, four people, including firefighters and civil servants, died and two volunteers suffered severe burns when they were trapped in flames due to strong winds.

As dry weather continues this year due to the El Niño phenomenon, the forest fires that have been occurring, mainly on the Indonesian islands of Borneo and Sumatra, are at the most serious level in 11 years since 2015.

Nusantara Atlas, a forest destruction monitoring platform, announced based on satellite data that 1,916,588 ha (hectare, 1 ha is 10,000 m2) was burned by forest fires in Indonesia from January to September this year. This is 32 times the area of ​​Seoul.

Previously, the total area burned by forest fires in Indonesia in 2015 was 2.6 million ha, and in 2019, nearly 1 million ha were burned by forest fires.

According to the Indonesian Ministry of Health, as of the 2nd of this month, the number of people with respiratory diseases caused by forest fires exceeded 400,000, and it is estimated that more than 3,500 people died in September this year due to worsening air quality.

As smoke spread from forest fires in Indonesia, air quality in neighboring countries Malaysia, Singapore, and East Timor recently deteriorated significantly, leading to diplomatic conflicts.