Forest and peatland fires burning across Indonesia have exposed more than 12.5 million people to hazardous smoke, closing schools, disrupting transport, and triggering a sharp rise in respiratory illnesses across Southeast Asia. The disaster, intensified by severe drought and commercial land development, has driven high-confidence satellite hotspots past 1,500 nationally before fluctuating, according to regional monitoring data.
Health Impacts and Rising Respiratory Infections
According to the Indonesian Health Ministry, figures recorded between August 18 and September 21 show 174,694 cases of acute respiratory infection across seven fire-affected provinces. That total includes more than 40,000 children under the age of five. The hardest-hit regions are Sumatra and Kalimantan, the Indonesian portion of Borneo, alongside substantial burning reported in South Papua.
In Malaysia, the toxic haze has pushed air quality to dangerous levels. According to the Malaysian Ministry of Health, asthma cases climbed to 1,811 during the week of August 23 to 29, up sharply from 219 the previous week, while conjunctivitis cases rose to 720. Residents in affected areas report severe health complications from microscopic pollutants bypassing lung tissue and entering the bloodstream.
“It’s hard for me to go out of the house. I only leave to buy vegetables like this, and then I go home. I just got out of the hospital because I needed a nebulizer. My throat was so itchy because of the haze,” a resident of Serian, Malaysia, told Firstpost News. Firstpost News
Cross-Border Haze and Regional Response
The smoke has crossed international borders, prompting the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) to activate a Level 3 transboundary haze alert for the southern part of the region, signaling a high risk of severe cross-border pollution. Malaysia declared a local emergency on September 4 in the Serian district of Sarawak after its Air Pollution Index (API) exceeded 500, a threshold indicating severe health effects. In Kuching, the state capital of Sarawak, the index reached 407.
Educational disruptions have widened across both nations. By September 9, more than 1.4 million students in Indonesia had been shifted to online learning. In Palembang, South Sumatra, approximately 250,000 students across 1,030 schools were affected. In Malaysia, the Ministry of Education enforced mandatory closures for schools when the air quality index surpassed 200, idling hundreds of schools and impacting roughly 200,000 students in and around Kuching alone.
Emergency Operations and Suppression Challenges
As of September 20, Indonesian emergency operations deployed more than 64 aircraft and helicopters alongside over 54,000 personnel engaged in water bombing, ground patrols, and cloud seeding. International assistance arrived as Japan dispatched three Chinook helicopters, while Malaysia contributed one aircraft, three helicopters, and 52 firefighting personnel.
Efforts to extinguish the flames face severe logistical hurdles. In Central Kalimantan on September 21, smoke density grounded water-bombing helicopters entirely. Prolonged drought has depleted local water supplies, forcing the military to drill new wells for firefighting operations. The Indonesian Health Ministry responded by dispatching nearly one million masks, hundreds of oxygen concentrators, and thousands of medical workers to the region.
Climate Drivers and Land Management Factors
NASA attributed the exceptionally dry conditions fueling the fires to a super El Niño combined with a positive Indian Ocean Dipole, two ocean-temperature patterns that suppress rainfall over Indonesia. The World Meteorological Organization noted that this natural El Niño cycle operates against the backdrop of human-caused global warming.
Historical comparison data from the Indonesian Forestry Ministry shows that approximately 200,000 hectares burned between January and July, outpacing the 137,000 hectares burned during the same period in 2019 and fewer than 93,000 hectares in 2023. The scale approaches the catastrophic 2015 season, which saw around 600,000 hectares burned by the end of July. Environmental groups and government investigations note that decades of commercial land development, including drained peatlands and industrial plantations, have left vast organic landscapes highly combustible and prone to deep underground smoldering.
Keep reading