Bogor reopens Galuga to 128 trucks two days after fire, with cooling still under way

A fire that arrived from outside the fence

The fire at TPAS Galuga in Bogor regency started at around 17:00 on Monday 7 September 2026. It did not begin in the waste.

It began on neighbouring land and spread into the landfill, reaching sections of older disposal area that were no longer in active use. Strong winds and dry material carried it quickly. The affected area was about 5.5 hectares at the outset and reached 8.4 hectares by 8 September.

The response drew in fire units, police, the regional disaster agency and other services, with aerial water bombing flown in support from Atang Sendjaja air base. The regency also built an emergency reservoir on site to shorten the water supply run, which is one of the more practical interventions available when tanker turnaround time is the limiting factor.

By 8 September the fire was described as under control, though smoke continued to rise, and the regent reported hotspots extinguished by that Tuesday. Cooling continued afterwards. Reporting on 14 September indicated roughly 2.4 hectares still being worked out of the 8.4 that had burned.

The closure, and the decision to reopen

On 8 September the regency closed the site for a day. The reason was access: water tankers and fire vehicles needed the roads, and a queue of waste trucks would have obstructed them.

That closure is the part worth examining, because a city cannot stop producing waste for a day.

On the morning of 9 September the site reopened. Rudy Mashudi, Head of the Bogor city environment agency, described the arrangement as agreed between the environment and transport agencies of both the city and the regency.

The environment and transport agencies of Bogor city and Bogor regency have agreed that from this morning waste disposal at TPAS Galuga is open again.

The reopening was not a return to normal operation. It was a managed partial resumption. 128 city trucks were admitted on a rotating schedule, each carrying roughly three to five tonnes. Truck flow was deliberately restricted so that water tankers and fire vehicles could continue working at the same time, and tipping zones were designated away from the ground still alight.

Regular collection rounds across Bogor city resumed once the site reopened.

Why a two day turnaround matters

Compare this with what a longer closure produces. When a landfill shuts for a week, waste accumulates at transfer stations, then on streets, then in watercourses. The public health consequence arrives within days in a tropical climate, and the reputational damage to a waste programme can undo months of work on household separation.

Bogor closed for one day and reopened under restriction on the second. Three features made that possible, and each is replicable.

The first is that the closure had a stated purpose, emergency vehicle access, rather than being a general precaution. A closure justified by a specific operational need can be lifted as soon as that need is met.

The second is the joint agreement between city and regency agencies, and notably between environment and transport agencies on both sides. Galuga sits in Bogor regency and serves Bogor city, so neither government could reopen it alone. Including the transport agencies matters because the constraint was road access, not disposal capacity.

The third is zoning. Designating tipping areas away from the fire ground allowed disposal and firefighting to run concurrently rather than sequentially. That requires a site with enough space and enough operational knowledge to know which areas are safe, which is an argument for maintaining current site plans rather than discovering the layout during an incident.

The monitoring that should accompany a landfill fire

The environment ministry confirmed air quality monitoring at the Galuga fire site.

This deserves more attention than it usually receives. Burning mixed waste produces particulates and a range of combustion products that differ from a vegetation fire, and the population exposed is whoever lives downwind, typically communities adjacent to the landfill. Those are the residents who already carry the site's odour and traffic burden.

Monitoring during an incident does two things. It tells the local government whether any advisory or temporary relocation is warranted while the fire burns. And it creates a record, which matters for the longer argument about site management, because a landfill that burns repeatedly produces a cumulative exposure that no single incident report captures.

The cause here also carries a lesson. The fire entered from neighbouring land. A landfill's fire risk is not confined to what it holds, and a perimeter with cleared vegetation is a cheap control that many sites lack.

Where the fire spread is equally instructive. It took hold in sections of old disposal area no longer in use, not in the active working face. Disused cells receive the least attention: no daily cover is being applied, no compaction plant is working them, and staff have no operational reason to visit. They are also where decomposition has run longest and gas accumulation is highest. A site's closed sections are, in other words, both its most combustible ground and its least supervised, and that combination is worth designing around.

Sirkularium's view for government and public institutions

Three observations.

First, every district with a single disposal site should hold a written service continuity plan for partial site availability, not only for total closure. Bogor's arrangement, restricted vehicle types, rotating schedules, designated tipping zones away from an incident, is exactly what such a plan should specify in advance. Written beforehand, it can be activated in hours rather than negotiated during an emergency.

Second, where a site serves one jurisdiction and sits in another, the continuity plan needs both signatures and should include the transport agencies alongside the environment agencies. Bogor demonstrated that this coordination can be done quickly, but it is faster still when the protocol already exists.

Third, on perimeter management. A fire that begins outside the fence and spreads in is preventable through firebreaks and vegetation clearance along the boundary. We would encourage districts to inspect landfill perimeters before the dry season, and to treat adjacent land use as part of the site's risk assessment rather than as someone else's concern.

What to watch next: confirmation that cooling at Galuga is complete and the final burned area, publication of the air quality monitoring results for communities around the site, whether the emergency reservoir is retained as permanent firefighting infrastructure, and whether Bogor city and regency formalise the reopening protocol they improvised here.

Two days from ignition to trucks tipping again is a good operational result. Sirkularium will continue following whether it gets written down.