Indonesia fires leave 200,000 pupils learning at home

Indonesia fires have closed hundreds of schools indefinitely in West Kalimantan, leaving about 200,000 pupils learning from home as haze from burning peatland and forest spreads across Borneo.

Firefighters in Sintang regency said they were struggling to keep up with blazes that have shrouded communities in smoke. Fire chief Sampe Ritonga said his team sometimes works until dawn and has limited equipment, including two 6,000-litre fire engines that must be used one at a time while the other refills.

“Our facilities and infrastructure for firefighting are very limited,” Sampe said. He said low river levels were forcing crews to search for water in ditches and small rivers, sometimes far from active fire sites.

In Pontianak, the capital of West Kalimantan province, residents have been breathing foul air for weeks. At one point on Sunday, PM2.5 pollution exceeded 500 micrograms per cubic metre, according to IQAir, more than 100 times the World Health Organization's recommended safe limit for the fine airborne particles.

The province has also recorded a surge in respiratory ailments. The haze can be smelled indoors in Pontianak, a city of about 700,000 people.

West Kalimantan governor Ria Norsan said the province was doing its best and that shortages of personnel, equipment, water or other needs should be reported immediately so solutions could be found. The provincial government has said it has nearly 14,500 firefighting personnel in the field, with nine aircraft available for water-bombing, three for patrols and one for cloud-seeding operations.

Experts blame the fires in part on a stronger-than-usual El Nino episode that is drying Southeast Asia. They also cite climate change, decades of forest degradation and slash-and-burn land clearing practices.

Greenpeace Indonesia forest campaigner Belgis Habiba said drained peatland linked to plantations had become flammable. Greenpeace estimates, using government data, that about 35 million people in Indonesia are exposed to toxic haze. Smoke from the fires has also affected communities in the Malaysian part of Borneo and beyond.

According to the Nusantara Atlas fire tracker, more than 285,000 hectares have burned in Indonesia so far this year. Official data show 38,000 hectares have burned in West Kalimantan.