Crash of Indonesian water-bombing helicopter kills crew member

JAKARTA: A crew member of a helicopter battling Indonesian wildfires was killed on Sunday when the aircraft crashed into a river while scooping up water for an airborne drop, a local disaster agency said.

The crash in Borneo's South Kalimantan province was the second in days involving a firefighting aircraft, after a military helicopter plunged into the waters off Borneo on Wednesday, killing three people.

Two Australian pilots survived Sunday's crash and were "safe", Berton Panjaitan, a spokesman for the National Disaster Mitigation Agency, told AFP earlier on Sunday. Further details of their condition were not immediately available.

Dramatic video footage showed the firefighting helicopter being slowly dragged downwards after filling its bucket in the Barito River, eventually plunging nose-first into the water.

"A joint search and rescue team recovered the final victim at 6:08 pm local time during a diving operation involving four divers," a statement released by the search and rescue office in the provincial capital, Banjarmasin, on Sunday evening said.

The Southeast Asian archipelago has been struggling for months to control blazes that have burned through large swathes of Sumatra, Borneo and Papua, causing choking haze that drifted to neighbouring Malaysia, East Timor and Singapore.

"This incident occurred while the air fleet was conducting a water-bombing operation," spokesman Berton told AFP.

The Eurocopter EC225LP Super Puma belonged to a company the disaster mitigation agency had contracted for water-bombing operations, he said.

On Wednesday, a helicopter carrying eight people crashed during a mission to fight fires in Tanjung Puting National Park, home to animals including critically endangered Bornean orangutans.

That crash also occurred while the aircraft was scooping seawater for water bombing, according to an army statement that said the cause was under investigation.

Aside from ground-based firefighters, Indonesia has relied heavily on air operations to fight the fires, which have destroyed more than 1.9 million hectares, according to deforestation monitor Nusantara Atlas.

The fires are driven in part by a strong El Nino weather phenomenon, which typically causes drought in Indonesia.