Australian water-bombing aircraft have begun flying over East Kalimantan as Indonesia battles its most intense wildfire season in 11 years, bringing outside help to a firefighting effort stretched across Sumatra, Borneo and Papua.

The deployment, run by Australia's New South Wales Rural Fire Service, centres on a C-130 Hercules Large Air Tanker and a Cessna Citation lead plane, supported by a crew of 20 tactical aviation specialists. The aircraft are scheduled to support Indonesian operations from 6 to 12 November.

Speaking in Samarinda on Saturday, East Kalimantan Deputy Governor Seno Aji said the deployment came as a swift response by Indonesia's National Disaster Management Agency, known as BNPB, to a direct request from the provincial government. "We requested support to tackle forest and land fires in East Kalimantan. Thankfully, the BNPB responded quickly by deploying aircraft from Australia to conduct water-bombing operations in the region," he said.

The C-130 flew three water-bombing sorties on its first day of operations on Friday, 6 November, with the first drops targeting the Makroman area in the Sambutan district of Samarinda. Each sortie can drop up to 15,000 litres of water, and the heavy aircraft is slated to fly up to six sorties a day, operating out of Dhomber Air Force Base in Balikpapan.

Emergency operations are focusing on four priority areas: the provincial capital of Samarinda, alongside Kutai Kartanegara, Paser and East Kutai regencies. The intensive aerial campaign is scheduled to run through 12 November to tackle fires affecting between 40 and 50 hectares of land in the province. On the ground, local disaster management units and the East Kalimantan Forest and Land Fire Task Force remain on high alert, cross-referencing real-time satellite imagery with the flight paths of the Australian aircraft.

An official handover ceremony for the two aircraft took place on Thursday, 5 November, at Halim Perdanakusuma Airport in Jakarta, attended by BNPB chief Lieutenant General Kristomei Sianturi and Australian Ambassador to Indonesia Roderick Bruce Brazier. The ambassador said the deployment reflected the deep strategic partnership between the two nations, pointing to a long history of mutual aid during major natural disasters, including Cyclone Tracy in Darwin in 1974 and the Australian bushfires in 2020.

The Australian help arrives as the human cost of the fires keeps rising. Indonesian Health Ministry data showed that fire and haze had caused more than 400,000 cases of acute respiratory infections across seven provinces as of 2 November. BNPB chief Sianturi has said authorities are making major efforts to control the fires through waterbombing, cloud seeding and international assistance.

The risks facing firefighting crews were underlined days before the Australian arrival, when a waterbombing helicopter crashed in Central Kalimantan on 4 November during a firefighting mission, killing one crew member and injuring five others, according to a military statement cited by Reuters.

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese is scheduled to visit East Kalimantan on Wednesday, 11 November, as part of an official diplomatic and operational oversight visit, provincial officials said. The fires, driven by drought linked to a strong El Nino, have burned for months, and officials have warned that the danger will persist for weeks yet.