The Haze Seems to Have Weakened

But when is it going to go away completely? The reading tonight looks okay, but seems to be increasing, and that irritating smell is still lingering everywhere, I had to hold my breath several times when I was walking home just now. My wife is also developing phlegm, I think she might get sick sooner or later.

PSI and PM2.5 Readings

3-hour PSI Readings from 12AM to 12AM on 18 Jun 2013
Time12AM1AM2AM3AM4AM5AM6AM7AM8AM9AM10AM11AM
3-hr PSI145-----109106108115121123
Time12PM1PM2PM3PM4PM5PM6PM7PM8PM9PM10PM11PM
3-hr PSI11410495908581828897---
Hourly updates of 3-hr PSI readings are provided from 6am to 12midnight. The 3hr PSI readings are calculated based on PM10 concentrations only.
- See more at: http://app2.nea.gov.sg/anti-pollution-radiation-protection/air-pollution/psi#sthash.UsfbYnVm.dpuf

I'm wondering when they are burning the forest, do they ever think of the impact, they have got such a huge land area, so much forestation, obviously there's going to be a hell lot of smoke if there's a fire, and where is all that smoke going to go? I think it's going to contribute to a bigger hole in the OUR ozone layer, and who's going to be responsible for that? But, from what I know, Singapore's foreign ministry has been telling Indonesia of our concern, has been offering assistance but they simply refuse to stop the burning, and I remember there was once when their minister proudly rejected our offer of help.

Oh I managed to find that article,

Govt Declines Singapore Help on Haze

By webadmin on 6:57 am September 15, 2011.

Category Archive

Fidelis E. Satriastanti

Though heavy haze continues to blanket parts of western Indonesia, the government said on Wednesday that things were under control and it did not need help from other countries.

Singapore, which falls victim to Indonesia’s annual haze problem, has offered to help put out forest fires. However, the deputy minister for environmental damage control and climate change, Arif Yuwono, said the government was capable of resolving the matter on its own.

Singapore Environment and Water Resources Minister Vivian Balakrishan told Channel NewsAsia that her country had offered to send aircraft to help Indonesia extinguish forest fires, which threaten to cast a pall over the city-state’s glitzy Formula 1 night race next week.

“We have a team on standby to help with putting out fires or even with cloud seeding, as well as technical assistance. It depends on whether the Indonesians request or require our assistance,” Balakrishan said.

Arif told the Jakarta Globe his ministry had yet to receive any formal offers, but no help needed.

“We don’t need any help [from foreign countries] because we already have our own standard procedures for handling disasters. The forest fires are now being handled by the BNPB [National Disaster Mitigation Agency] through rain-making operations,” he said.

“We also hope that the fires will decrease once the rainy season begins.”

Arif added that accepting help from foreign countries was complicated because the president needed to declare a natural disaster emergency and approve any aid from other countries.

Sutopo Purwo Nugroho, a spokesman for the BNPB, also said there was no threat.

“Indonesia still has many resources, so any foreign help will be accepted only if we cannot control the situation ,” he said.

The government this week began rain-making operations focused on South Sumatra because the province will host the South East Asia Games in November and because it has 971 designated hotspots.

“We have decided to focus on putting out fires in the areas near the Games. We are creating buffer zones around the venues,” Arif said.

He added that three CASA 212-200 aircraft were being used to implement the month-long rainmaking initiative, which started on Monday.

Sutopo also claimed that the impact of the smoke was still localized and it had not reached other countries like fires in 1998 did. However, Malaysian state news agency Bernama reported that the country’s Environment Minister Douglas Uggah Embas last week sent a letter to his Indonesian counterpart about hundreds of suspected fires on Sumatra.

The letter was sent as air quality on Friday dropped to a level deemed “unhealthy” in one area of Negeri Sembilan state, south of Kuala Lumpur.

Feel like laughing after reading it right? So what's going on? After almost 2 years, everything went out of control? So they still don't need any help? They still want to "make rain"? So what happened to their "many resources"? And I can't believe they'll only try to put out fires near the SEA Games, so let everywhere else burn? Localized? Hello, if it was localized, why the heck would Singapore bother offering help, why the heck would Malaysia send a letter to warn about "hundreds of suspected fires on Sumatra"? So what about this time? They going to say localized again? WTF, the haze comes EVERY FEW MONTHS ANNUALLY, come on, who are they trying to fool.

And I love this part, "Arif added that accepting help from foreign countries was complicated because the president needed to declare a natural disaster emergency and approve any aid from other countries.", yeah yeah, maybe they have too much land so it's okay to let a few hundreds to thousands of Kilometers Square of forest burn to nothing, they sure contribute a lot to this planet, maybe when the whole of Sumatra gets burned to nothing then they'll probably consider it a disaster.

Simply mind-boggling.

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