In Indonesia, forest fires plunge the entire region into toxic fog

Indonesia is plunged under a thick cloud of toxic smoke. The fires which continue to rage in the country are plunging the entire region into a major atmospheric crisis. This Thursday, October 15, the Malaysian capital Kuala Lumpur was the most polluted city in the world, according to the Swiss monitoring site IQAir.

Fires have devoured forests and peatlands in Borneo, Sumatra and Papua, spreading toxic smoke to neighboring Malaysia as well as Singapore and now East Timor. This Southeast Asian island state of less than 1.5 million inhabitants closed its schools for three days, starting Thursday, to “protect the health of students”.

In the town of Palangkaraya, which has around 300,000 inhabitants, the sky turned dark orange, with visibility reduced to a few dozen meters. “In recent days, the smoke is thick and, as I work outdoors, I have to breathe it, even if I wear a mask,” explained Heri, a motorcycle taxi driver.

Indonesia regularly battles forest fires during the dry season, which generally lasts from April to October. But the fires which have destroyed more than 900,000 hectares, according to the latest estimates, have intensified this year due to the powerful El Niño weather phenomenon.

Fires difficult to control

Indonesia has deployed some 60,000 agents and firefighters to fight the blazes, but is struggling to control the flames. This Thursday, an operation consisting of dropping dry ice over certain areas of South Sumatra was planned, in order to “clear the smoke”, indicated the coordinating minister in charge of security, Dudung Abdurachman.

According to studies, much of the toxic smoke comes from fires that start in peatlands. These are difficult to extinguish because they can smolder for months and spread underground, when these normally waterlogged ecosystems have been drained by humans for cultivation.

The cumulative total volume of emissions from fires “remains lower than in 2015,” Mark Parrington, a researcher at the Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service, told AFP. He noted, however, that before the rainy season begins, there are still several weeks of fire season and “the impacts on air quality have been very severe and persistent.”