Wildfires are ripping across parts of Indonesia, destroying precious peatland and smothering the country in a toxic smoke so thick, people are struggling to breathe. With months of wildfire season still remaining, experts warn this could end up as one of the country’s worst.
Blazes have been raging for many weeks, with parts of Sumatra and Indonesian Borneo among the hardest hit. Flights have been delayed, parks shut and thousands of schools closed as reports of asthma cases and respiratory infections soar. Authorities have deployed more than 50 aircraft for both cloud-seeding — the attempt to artificially simulate rain — and water-bombing operations, according to Reuters.
Indonesia is no stranger to wildfires; they are an annual event. But this year, the arrival of what’s expected to be a “super” El Niño — a supercharged version of the natural climate pattern which tends to bring bone dry conditions to the country — has set the stage for unusually intense blazes.
A previous super El Niño in 2015 fueled catastrophic fires, which incinerated around 2.6 million hectares — an area roughly the size of Massachusetts — cost the country as much as $28 billion and may have caused 100,000 premature deaths across Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore.
