Firefighting helicopter crashes into Borneo river, one crew member missing

A water-bombing helicopter fighting Indonesia's wildfires slammed into a river in South Kalimantan on Sunday, sending its crew into the water. Two Australian nationals were pulled out and are safe, but an Indonesian crew member is still missing, disaster mitigation agency spokesman Berton Panjaitan told AFP.

Amateur video caught the sequence: the helicopter dips a bambi bucket into Borneo's Barito River, then gets dragged downward, losing control mid-manoeuvre before plunging nose-first into the water. Berton confirmed the aircraft went down while the air fleet was running a water-bombing operation.

The chopper was a Eurocopter EC225LP Super Puma, flown by a company contracted by the national disaster mitigation agency. It is the second firefighting helicopter lost in days — on Wednesday, a military helicopter scooping seawater for the same kind of mission crashed off Borneo, killing three of the eight people aboard. The army said the cause of that accident is still under investigation.

Indonesia has been battling blazes across Sumatra, Borneo and Papua for months. The fires have torched more than 1.9 million hectares, according to deforestation monitor Nusantara Atlas, and pushed choking haze as far as Malaysia, East Timor and Singapore.

Ground crews are stretched thin, so Jakarta has leaned hard on aircraft to douse the flames — a strategy now under fresh scrutiny after two crashes in a single week. Part of the problem sits in the weather: a strong El Nino pattern is driving drought conditions that help the fires spread.

Wednesday's military crash went down near Tanjung Puting National Park, home to critically endangered Bornean orangutans. Sunday's crews were still searching the river for the missing Indonesian national.