Indonesia fires leave 200,000 pupils learning from home

Indonesia's wildfires have kept about 200,000 pupils in West Kalimantan studying from home and are straining health services as haze from burning peatland and forest spreads across Borneo and into Malaysia.

Hundreds of schools have been closed indefinitely in West Kalimantan because of air pollution, according to the provincial education ministry. In Pontianak, junior high school vice principal Syarifah Hatifah said pupils were in the third week of the second school closure of the fire season, the longest such closure she could remember in a 30-year career.

Syarifah said the closures were meant to protect children from smoke and dust, but that some pupils lacked stable internet, computers or reliable power for live online classes. She said the school planned to offer free extra lessons once in-person learning resumes.

In Kubu Raya regency, health agency head Iwansyah said more than 1,400 people had been treated or hospitalised for acute respiratory infections so far in September, after 6,396 in August. He said the agency was distributing about 1,000 masks a day and its stock was starting to run low.

Iwansyah said the agency was also monitoring 225 diarrhoea cases so far this month as drought reduced access to clean water. With Indonesia's BMKG weather agency warning of little relief in the weeks ahead, he said clinics were preparing medicines and equipment and increasing checks of water and air quality.

Outside Pontianak, Yonas, deputy head of Lintang Batang hamlet, said residents had pooled money to buy a water pump, hoses and other firefighting equipment while battling a peatland fire that had burned for four days. He said volunteers still lacked hoses, food and protective gear, including masks.

Earlier official and independent accounts showed the scale of the fires and haze across Indonesia. West Kalimantan's government has said it had nearly 14,500 firefighting personnel in the field, with aircraft available for water-bombing, patrols and cloud-seeding operations. Official data cited earlier showed 38,000 hectares had burned in West Kalimantan, while the Nusantara Atlas fire tracker put the nationwide area burned at more than 285,000 hectares.

Deputy health minister Dante Saksono Harbuwono previously said more than five million people across Borneo and Sumatra had been directly exposed to health risks from wildfire haze. Smoke from the fires has also affected communities in the Malaysian part of Borneo.

Experts cited earlier blamed the fires partly on a stronger-than-usual El Nino episode that is drying Southeast Asia, while also pointing to climate change, forest degradation and slash-and-burn land clearing. West Kalimantan's wetter season usually starts around October or November.