Mount Bromo wildfire spreads as Indonesia battles dry-season blazes
Indonesia fights a growing wildfire at Mount Bromo in East Java, closing the park as dry-season fires spread across the archipelago.
Indonesian authorities deployed aircraft and hundreds of personnel on Sunday to combat a wildfire at Mount Bromo, a prominent peak inside the Bromo Tengger Semeru National Park in East Java. The blaze, the largest reported this week, has scorched roughly 176 hectares (435 acres) of the park's terrain.
The national park was closed to visitors on Saturday, and park chief Rudijanta Tjahja Nugraha said the closure would stay in effect until further notice. Firefighting efforts involve a mix of park rangers, police, soldiers, disaster management staff, and volunteers, supported by helicopters, drones, and ground crews constructing firebreaks to curb the spread.
Nugraha noted that rugged volcanic slopes have made access difficult, with several hotspots located in areas unreachable by land. The Mount Bromo fire is part of a broader pattern of wildfires across Indonesia during an unusually dry season. A separate fire in Central Java's Banyumas Regency, sparked by land-clearing, spread quickly through dry vegetation on Friday. In West Java, a blaze in the Suryakencana Meadow of Mount Gede Pangrango National Park prompted temporary closure of hiking trails to Mount Gede and Mount Pangrango.
The national meteorological agency attributes the accelerating fires to strong winds and extremely dry vegetation, compounded by the El Niño weather pattern and seasonal dry winds from Australia. Land-clearing burns, often set illegally by plantation owners or farmers, remain a recurring trigger for fires on Sumatra and Borneo, periodically shrouding parts of Southeast Asia in hazardous haze.