Indonesia wildfires: Toxic haze turns skies orange as air pollution engulfs Southeast Asia

Thick haze turned the skies in Indonesias Palangkaraya apocalyptic shades of yellow and orange on Thursday reducing visibility to a few dozen metres as wildfires cause a regional air pollution crisisKuala Lumpur topped monitoring site IQAirs ranking of most polluted major global cities by Thursday followed closely by Singapore and with Indonesias Medan and capital Jakarta just behindFires burning for months in Indonesia have sent smoke across the region and on Thursday East Timor began a threeday school closure prompted by the hazeBut those most affected are residents at the epicentre including in Kalimantans Palangkaraya where skies turned deep orange on Wednesday night and remained a grimy yellow on ThursdayThese past few days the smoke has been thick and since I work outdoors Im forced to breathe it in even though I wear a mask said motorbike taxi driver Heri who like many Indonesians uses a single nameMy eyes have started to sting because of the dust from the burned debris flying around in the smoke he told AFPI still have to work and have been struggling in the haze for four months now if I dont work I wont earn any money Everyone is forced to fight against this dense smokeVery dangerousIn East Timor people were out in the capital Dili under a yellowtinged sky but most were wearing masks as the government advised a day earlier in announcing the school closuresResidents welcomed the decision although they said the pollution had been even worse earlier in the weekRecently the pollution in Dili has been very severe 30yearold midwife Sonya da Costa Soares told AFPWe cant see the sun the pollution is heavy she addedThough her child is still too young for school she said the decision to keep students home was very important so that children are not put in dangerIndonesia experiences wildfires regularly during its dry season but this year the blazes have been especially severe because a strong El Nino has brought droughtThe fires have burned through hundreds of thousands of hectares of forest and plantations in Sumatra Borneo and Papua and caused air pollution to surge locally as well as in Malaysia Singapore the Philippines and East TimorVitaliano da Costa Calapes an 18yearold student at Dilis St Ignatius Loyola College said he was preparing for upcoming examsWe believe in the coming days there will be no pollution and school will return to normal thats what we hope he saidFelicidade Alves dos Santos Martins whose daughter Febrianti was home from middle school said the pollution had been even worse earlier in the weekIt felt like smoke from fires was covering all of Dili and the mountains she said This pollution is very dangerous it can make us sickDry ice experimentIndonesia has deployed tens of thousands of firefighters to tackle the blazes but has struggled to bring the flames under controlOn Thursday it was due to try dropping dry ice over parts of South Sumatra to break up the smoke according to chief security minister Dudung AbdurachmanGod willing if it succeeds we will continue in other key regions he said announcing the plan WednesdayResearch has found much of the haze comes from fires burning in peatlandsThese blazes are difficult to extinguish because they burn underground when the normally waterlogged ecosystems are dried out for cultivationWhile drought contributes to the fires experts say deforestation and drying of peatlands has damaged previously fireresistant landscapesThe estimated cumulative total estimated fire emissions still remain lower than in 2015 Mark Parrington senior scientist at Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service told AFPBut he noted there are still several weeks of fire season to go and the air quality impacts have been very severe and persistentThis story has been sourced from a third party syndicated feed agencies Midday accepts no responsibility or liability for its dependability trustworthiness reliability and data of the text Midday managementmiddaycom reserves the sole right to alter delete or remove without notice the content in its absolute discretion for any reason whatsoever