A helicopter fighting Indonesia’s wildfires has crashed into a river, killing one crew member, while two others were rescued safely. The Super Puma H-225 aircraft, contracted for firefighting, plunged into the Barito River in South Kalimantan province on Borneo island while collecting water to fight fires. Rescue teams found the body of the dead crew member the same day.
The two survivors have been named as Australian Michael Betteridge and New Zealander Hugh Page, local authorities said. Both were safely recovered and hospitalised. The crew member who died was Indonesian navigator Yayan Supyansuri. The helicopter had been contracted to Indonesian authorities to help fight the country’s worst forest and land fire season in more than a decade, with fires burning across large areas of Kalimantan, Sumatra and Papua, exacerbated by drought linked to El Niño.
Indonesia’s National Disaster Management Agency (BNPB) said it was committed to facilitating an official investigation into the crash. Investigators have not yet established what caused the aircraft to go down. The helicopter nosedived into the river during the water-collection run, according to local reports.
Second water-bombing crash this month
The crash follows another one on 4 November in Central Kalimantan, in which three Indonesian crew members were killed when a separate water-bombing helicopter went down. Two fatal crashes in five days have now hit the firefighting effort in the middle of the worst fire season in over a decade, raising questions about the safety of the water-bombing operations and the condition of the contracted fleet.
Fires have been burning across large areas of Indonesia, particularly in Kalimantan — the Indonesian portion of Borneo — as well as in Sumatra and Papua. The severe season has been driven by drought conditions linked to El Niño, and firefighting aircraft have been working around the clock to protect communities and peatland. The loss of two aircraft in a week will stretch the aerial firefighting capacity at the height of the season.
The survivors, Betteridge and Page, were taken to hospital after their rescue. No further details of their condition had been released at the time of reporting. The BNPB investigation will examine the aircraft, the mission profile and the conditions on the Barito River at the time of the crash.
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