Massive landfill fire in Indonesia prompts renewed calls to end open dumping
Landfill fires are a recurring problem, particularly during prolonged dry spells exacerbated by El Nino.
A rubbish picker collects valuable items from the smouldering Jatiwaringin landfill in Banten province, Indonesia on Jul 7, 2026. (Photo: CNA/Wisnu Agung Prasetyo)
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TANGERANG, Banten: For more than a week, the rundown hall of Tanjakan Mekar village office was home to over 200 residents forced to flee their homes after fire engulfed a massive landfill in their neighbourhood 30km west of Jakarta.
“It was so hard to breathe. My throat hurt and my eyes stung,” said Fitriah, 34, a housewife who sought refuge there with her two children.
Life at the shelter was hard. Shifting winds occasionally carried the toxic haze into the evacuation centre.
At night, sleep was elusive. Families lay side by side on thin mats, worrying about the homes they had left behind, their belongings, and whether the flames would creep even closer.
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The Jatiwaringin landfill in Tangerang regency caught fire on Jun 30 and spread to around 15ha of the 33ha site. That is equivalent to about 22 football fields burning.
For days, some 300 firefighters and volunteers battled the fire round the clock and 19 fire engines, four water tank trucks and three helicopters were deployed, shuttling back and forth collecting and dousing thousands of litres of water from the ground and above.
“I have never seen a fire this big,” said Madin, 40, a sanitation worker, of the Jatiwaringin fire.
While the dumpsite had caught fire several times before, previous blazes were relatively small and usually extinguished within a day or two, he said.
The fire was finally contained completely at 7.30 pm last Thursday (Jul 9), the Indonesia’s National Disaster Mitigation Agency (BNPB) announced.
As residents returned to homes covered in thick black ash, the police are still investigating what sparked the Jatiwaringin fire and have not ruled out negligence or open burning.
Jatiwaringin, which receives around 1,200 tonnes of waste each day, is among hundreds of Indonesian landfills that still operate using an “open dumping” system, in which waste is simply piled into large, uncovered mounds with little compaction, soil cover or gas management.
Unlike at controlled or sanitary landfills, the combustible materials and flammable gases at these open dumpsites are often exposed to heat and ignition sources.
Environment Minister Jumhur Hidayat said the government is looking to stop open dumping practices in Indonesia by the end of the year.
“The (Jatiwaringin) fire is not a natural disaster but a failure and negligence in its waste management system,” he said on Jul 5, as quoted by RRI radio website.
Experts say the blaze has highlighted the urgency of improving how Indonesia’s fast-filling landfills are managed.
THE EL NINO FACTOR
Landfill fires are a recurring problem in Indonesia, particularly during periods of prolonged dry spells exacerbated by El Nino, which typically occurs every two to seven years.
During the El Nino year of 2023, authorities recorded 35 landfill fires nationwide, including one at Bali’s Suwung dumpsite which burned for a month and affected about 16 hectares of the site’s 32 hectares from Oct 12 to Nov 13, making it Indonesia’s worst landfill fire.
Local media reported at least seven fires in 2024 and eight in 2025 despite wetter La Nina conditions.
Forecasters have warned that El Nino is set to return this year, bringing hotter and drier weather.
Four days after the Jatiwaringin fire started, another landfill in Jember, East Java was also ablaze but the fire was put out in a matter of hours.
The exact cause of such fires is often never established.
“At a landfill, there is no shortage of fuel: Dried organic waste, plastics, paper, textiles, wood, rubber, household refuse and possibly electronic waste or batteries,” Mahawan Karuniasa, an environmental engineering expert at the University of Indonesia, told CNA.
And once the smallest spark reaches a landfill, the conditions are ideal for a major fire.
Decomposition of organic materials produces methane, a highly flammable and potent greenhouse gas, Mahawan said, while heat from extreme weather dries out the waste and lowers the ignition point of combustible materials.
“Which is why they can ignite, spread easily and keep smoldering beneath the surface which makes detecting, let alone extinguishing, such fire difficult,” he said.
“As long as methane continues to be produced in open dumps, with organic waste mixed together with other types of rubbish, fires like this are not merely a possibility — they are inevitable,” said Wahyu Eka Styawan of environmental advocacy group Walhi.
OPEN DUMPING RAISES FIRE RISK
According to the Environment Ministry, more than 340 of Indonesia’s 550 landfills still rely on open dumping despite a government ban on the practice since 2013.
Jatiwaringin had already been singled out by the ministry for its poor management.
In May 2025, regulators ordered the landfill to close temporarily after finding it was still operating as an open dumpsite, allowing untreated leachate to seep into the ground and failing to stop open burning — a practice sometimes used by scavengers to strip rubber insulation from electrical cables to recover valuable metal.
The dumpsite was allowed to reopen in December after the Tangerang regency government pledged to gradually convert it into a controlled landfill, where waste is compacted and covered with layers of soil every few days to reduce the risk of fires, odour and methane emissions.
But the transition remained incomplete.
Rizal Irawan, the Environment Ministry’s deputy for law enforcement, said parts of Jatiwaringin were still operating under the old open dumping system.
“The fire likely originated in an area that had not yet been converted to a controlled landfill,” Rizal said on Jul 5, as quoted by CNN Indonesia.
“There shall be no more open dumping (landfills). The (central) government will make sure all regencies and cities are ending these practices.”
The challenge to comply with Indonesia’s ban on open dumping, which dates back to 2013, largely boils down to money, experts said.
Converting an open dumpsite into a controlled landfill requires significant investment in heavy machinery, soil cover and drainage systems.
There is also the cost of day-to-day operations.
Studies estimate that managing waste in a controlled landfill can cost up to US$10 per tonne.
Meanwhile sanitary landfills — which not only cover compacted rubbish in soil but also capture methane and treat leachate to prevent groundwater contamination — can cost as much as US$30 per tonne because of the additional infrastructure and environmental safeguards they require.
In an open dump, where such safeguards are virtually non-existent, these costs and investments are practically zero.
For many local governments, the added costs are difficult to absorb.
“The main problem is funding. Regional governments typically allocate only about 1 per cent of their budgets to waste management, and some spend even less than that,” said Chandra Wahyu Purnomo, a chemical engineering professor at Gadjah Mada University.
KEEPING HAZARDOUS WASTE OUT
However, improving landfills addresses only part of the problem, experts said.
Indonesia already has laws prohibiting toxic and hazardous waste from being disposed of in landfills, with regulations dating back to 2008.
In 2019, Jakarta also introduced a national waste reduction roadmap requiring manufacturers to establish take-back schemes for products such as used batteries and small electronic devices.
Minimising the amount of organic waste from reaching landfills, for example, can prevent large amounts of methane from being generated. Keeping hazardous items such as batteries, aerosol cans and disposable lighters out of general waste can remove potential ignition sources.
“Lithium-ion batteries that end up in the waste stream can become damaged, crushed, punctured or short-circuited. These conditions can trigger thermal runaway, which is a rapid rise in temperature that causes the battery to catch fire and ignite surrounding waste,” said Mahawan of the University of Indonesia.
“Local governments need to prohibit batteries, power banks, e-cigarettes, mobile phones, laptops, electronic toys and other electronic devices from being mixed with household waste.”
Sanitation worker Madin confirmed that he occasionally hears small popping sounds from underneath Jatiwaringin’s trash mounds, which he assumes are exploding batteries, lighters or aerosol cans.
“Sometimes the sound is loud enough to startle me. Sometimes small fires emerge, which we put out right away,” he said. “It can be quite scary.”
To keep such hazardous waste out of landfills, experts said local governments need to establish dedicated collection points at the neighbourhood or village level. Such waste can then easily be transported to licensed hazardous waste treatment or recycling companies.
Wahyu of Walhi said Indonesia must also reduce the amount of methane-producing organic waste as well as flammable materials like paper, wood and fabric that reaches landfills.
This requires stronger support for community-level composting facilities and recycling centres, coupled with sustained public education campaigns to encourage households to separate organic and non-organic waste before disposal.
“The Jatiwaringin landfill fire is a reminder that unless the root causes are addressed upstream, Indonesia will continue to face the same disasters,” Wahyu said.
MORE COMPLEX THAN PEAT FIRES
The Jatiwaringin fire also exposed how ill-equipped some dumpsite operators are to deal with potential fire.
Ahmad Ruslan, head of the Tangerang Regency Disaster Mitigation Agency, said firefighters were first called on Jun 30 to a single hotspot covering about two hectares.
Six fire engines were dispatched, but crews soon found themselves battling not only the flames but the landfill’s terrain.
Jatiwaringin is effectively a 30-metre-high mountain of rubbish.
Narrow roads, designed primarily for garbage trucks, made it difficult for fire engines to manoeuvre while steep slopes prevented firefighters from reaching the seat of the fire.
Water sources were also located some distance away, forcing crews to spend precious time shuttling supplies instead of attacking the blaze.
“Access to the fire hotspots is difficult and the area is too vast,” Ruslan said on Jul 3, as quoted by Kompas news portal.
Eventually, helicopters and more fire engines were deployed, allowing a continuous flow of water onto the burning waste.
Recognising the similarities between landfill and peatland fires, Deputy Environment Minister Diaz Hendropriyono said on Jul 4 that peatland fire specialists from the Ministry of Forestry had been deployed to assist with operations at Jatiwaringin.
Peatlands are wetlands consisting of partially decayed plant matter that, when drained, can burn for extended periods and emit large amounts of carbon into the atmosphere.
But environmental engineering expert Mahawan said peatland fire experts might not help much as landfill fires present an even more complex challenge.
“In peatland fires, the fuel is dry, carbon-rich peat soil. In landfills, the fuel is far more heterogeneous: Organic waste, plastics, rubber, textiles, wood, metals, electronic waste, batteries, household chemicals and methane gas generated by decomposing rubbish,” he said.
“Managing landfill fires therefore requires a multidisciplinary response involving fire experts, waste management specialists, environmental engineers, public health experts, air quality specialists and hazardous waste professionals.”
Environment Minister Jumhur has urged regional governments and landfill operators across Indonesia to strengthen fire prevention and emergency preparedness as the country braces for another prolonged dry season.
“I urge all regents and mayors responsible for waste management to ensure they are prepared for El Nino,” he said on Jul 5.
“Make sure there are no activities around landfills that could trigger fires. Ensure adequate water supplies are available, position firefighting equipment close to landfill sites and carry out mitigation measures before fires occur.”
Mahawan added that landfill operators must also routinely monitor surface and subsurface temperatures and use thermal drones or infrared cameras to detect hotspots before they erupt into major fires.
“Every landfill should also have a comprehensive emergency response plan, including risk maps, standard operating procedures for tackling both surface and underground fires as well as emergency stockpiles of masks for nearby residents,” Mahawan said.
Regional governments and landfill operators must also start transforming their dumpsites into controlled or sanitary landfills, said Ibar Akbar of Greenpeace Indonesia, adding that they need to do so quickly.
“As climate change brings hotter, drier conditions to Indonesia, the consequences will become even more severe,” he said.
Source: CNA/ni
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