People watched a Super Puma firefighting helicopter on the banks of the Barito River after it crashed while scooping up water to extinguish forest and land fires in Barito Kuala Regency, South Kalimantan on November 8, 2026. (Photo by Reina / AFP)
Jakarta, Indonesia: A crew member was killed in Indonesia when a helicopter that was fighting wildfires crashed into a river while it scooped water for an airborne drop, a local disaster agency said.
The crash in Borneo Island'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 downward 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 provincial capital Banjarmasin on Sunday evening said.
The Southeast Asian archipelago has been struggling for months to control blazes that have burned through large swaths of Sumatra, Borneo and Papua islands, causing choking haze that drifted to neighbouring Malaysia, East Timor and Singapore.
