The High Cost of Fire

Smoke and flames stretched along both sides of the Palembang-Indralaya toll road when columnist Ahmadie Thaha crossed South Sumatra the previous weekend. He said the smoke had already made breathing difficult after he landed at Sultan Badaruddin II Airport.

The fires have burned peatland and forest for months, with thick smoke affecting residents and causing coughing in neighboring countries. Against that reality, announcements from Jakarta have focused on technologies that are still being “prepared” or “offered” to authorities.

The Forestry Ministry, the military, police, Manggala Agni and village officials have been working to fight the fires. President Prabowo Subianto has proposed smoke jumpers. BRIN chief Arif Satria has presented artificial-intelligence technology, weather modification and fine salt particles for cloud seeding.

Thaha says the question is not simply why BRIN has not extinguished the fires. Research institutions are not firefighting agencies, and a technology developed by scientists cannot automatically become an operational tool. The sharper question, he argues, is why the state lacks a mechanism to make a sufficiently mature technology ready for use when fires remain uncontrolled for days.

BRIN says it has long developed Dumakron, a cloud-seeding material made from very fine sodium chloride particles measuring about 2 to 5 micrometers. Drones can distribute it. That option also highlights the cost of conventional weather modification, which requires aircraft, pilots, materials, logistics, maintenance and flight coordination.

BNPB chief Suharyanto estimated in March 2025 that one weather-modification sortie cost about 200 million rupiah. The BMKG chief put the figure at 300 million rupiah or more, depending on the aircraft. Operations in West Kalimantan used nine sorties from Aug. 13 to 17, 2026, while Central Kalimantan used 13 sorties across two periods. The 22 sorties imply an indicative cost of 4.4 billion to 6.6 billion rupiah, not an actual budget figure.