Dumai, Riau Province, Oct 20 (ANTARA) - As a result of thick haze shrouding the area, authorities at 7 a.m temporarily closed Pinang Kampai airport of Riau province, on Wednesday.
Head of Pinang Kampai airport Ackwin said visibility on the air was only about 500 meters.
He said that the visibility was beyond the normal conditions so that the airport was temporarily closed for reasons of flight safety.
"We have postponed one flight to Jakarta this morning," Ackwin said.
He said that the weather condition was basically good but the haze was relatively thick that disturbed visibility. "We have also postponed the departure of a helicopter from Pekanbaru (Riau capital city) to Dumai until the visibility could reach over 1,000 meters," he said.
It was informed that the helicopter would depart from Pekanbaru to monitor forest fires in Dumai, Bengkalis and Rokan Hilir districts.
Images of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) satellite showed increasing number of hot spots in Dumai city, reaching 18 in different sub-districts.
On Tuesday, NOAA detected 202 hot spots on Indonesia's Sumatra Island.
The Pekanbaru-based Meteorology, Climatology and Geophysics Agency's analyst, Slamet Riyadi, said that most of the hot spots were found in South Sumatra Province with 66 hot spots.
The remaining hot spots were detected in the provinces of Jambi, Riau, Bangka Belitung, North Sumatra, West Sumatra, Aceh, and Lampung with 42, 36, 24, 16, 13, 3 and 2 hot spots respectively, he said.
On Monday, the imagery data released by NOAA satellite showed 358 hot spots throughout the island. But the number decreased to 202 thanks to rainfalls in some provinces, he said.
