Thick smoke stemming from forest fires has disrupted airline flights for several days in Indonesia's West Kalimantan province, as an intensifying El Niño weather pattern and a prolonged dry season exacerbate the situation.
Since Friday, a substantial white and yellowish haze has enveloped the city of Pontianak, diminishing visibility to less than 1 kilometer (0.62 miles). This poor air quality and limited visibility have also impeded firefighting efforts, even with equipment recently arrived from Japan.
While seasonal forest fires are beginning to subside across Indonesia, thick haze continues to shroud parts of the island of Kalimantan. According to the Ministry of Forestry's statement on Monday, monitoring data shows a significant decrease in high-confidence hot spots, which are strongly suspected to be caused by forest fires, in Central and West Kalimantan. No such hot spots were identified in Riau province.
"The thick smoke we’re currently experiencing, if we look in the direction the wind is blowing, is also smoke carried here from other provinces on the island of Kalimantan that are also on fire," stated Daniel, the head of the Disaster Information Task Force at the West Kalimantan Provincial Disaster Management Agency. Fires have been burning for over a month.
Indonesia's National Disaster Management Agency reports that fires continue to burn in several parts of Kalimantan, particularly in West and Central Kalimantan. Between January and July, the Forestry Ministry recorded more than 202,000 hectares of burned land, an area nearly three times the size of Singapore.
The resulting toxic haze and smoke have also affected neighboring countries. The smoke has drifted to the Philippines, over 800 kilometers (500 miles) away, and breached Malaysia’s emergency-level threshold for air pollution. This led authorities last week to declare an emergency in the Malaysian part of Boa town in Sarawak state, on the Malaysian side of Borneo.
On the Indonesian island of Sumatra, the air pollution has impacted several areas, forcing schools to suspend in-person learning activities. The haze has affected more than 1.4 million students across Indonesia.
Indonesian authorities have intensified firefighting operations across multiple provinces to contain the blazes. These efforts include aerial support from regional and international partners such as Japan, the United States, Russia, Australia, Canada, and Ukraine.