DESPITE being enveloped in a thick blanket of smoke, which reduced visibility to just 1km, for most of this and last week, Sarawak’s commercial air and river transport services were never in any danger of being disrupted.

“Operation is normal,” Richard Tajan, controller of rivers, said of the express boat service on the Sungai Rajang, the state’s longest river.

“No cancellation, no disruptions but we are monitoring the situation.”

Tajan said visibility at the moment is “manageable”.

He said the Sarawak Rivers Board has in place a standard operating procedure to follow if visibility is poor on the rivers and river traffic is endangered.

Low visibility is a real concern for the ubiquitous steel hulled boats on the Rajang, some with a top speed of 30 knots.

Sibu, whose air pollutant index (API) reading was a reassuring 80 and Kapit’s even better at 69 as of 11am today, are the least affected places in the state.

The worst hit areas are in southern Sarawak.

AirAsia flights into and out of the Kuching international airport have also not been disrupted.

“We are not affected at the moment,” Qastury Jawawi Lian, spokesman for the budget carrier, said today.

Kuching city folk woke up this morning to much welcome rain which brought the temperature down to a cool 26C from a sweltering 31C yesterday.

The air quality of Kuching might be improving but it is still in the unhealthy category with the API reading 147 as of 11am. It was 158 at 6am.

The air quality of the state’s two hardest hit areas, Samarahan and Sri Aman, is also improving.

The API reading is 128 in Samarahan and 159 in Sri Aman.

A forest fire in Petrajaya, which is suspected to have been deliberately started, has also contributed to the high API reading in Kuching.

Firemen have battled for a week now to put out the fire that engulfed an area of 12ha.

The Fire Department said the 44 men they had deployed had so far managed to douse the fire in two sectors covering 9.7ha.

The attempt to put out the fire in the renaming 2.4ha will continue today.

The overworked firefighters in the state on average have been called to respond to 16 fires daily since the first of the month.

Firemen in the Sri Aman division are also battling for the seventh day a 2ha forest fire at Kampung STC while in the Samarahan division, the operation to put out a 8ha forest fire at Kpg Lubuk Bunting had entered the fifth day.

They were also battling a forest fire in Kampung Pemukat, Kuala Lawas and a fire on a 9.3ha farm in Tanjung Manis.

All the schools that were ordered close yesterday reopened today. – September 11, 2019.