Indonesian authorities are focusing their firefighting efforts on six provinces – including Jambi, South Sumatra, West Kalimantan, Central Kalimantan, South Kalimantan, and Riau – that have vast areas of peatland and are vulnerable to fire during the annual dry season.
A resident in Central Kalimantan told BBC Indonesian he had been experiencing wildfires “for more than a month”.
“The smoke has become quite thick. When we step outside, our eyes start to sting. The smell of the smoke is also quite strong,” says Darwin Romy, an indigenous Dayak who lives in the province’s largest city Palangka Raya.
“The flames have already gotten close to residential areas … The problem is that water is starting to run dry here [for firefighting],” he says.
The mayor of the city of Pontianak in West Kalimantan said students would attend lessons online for as long as the fires continued.
“We have started to feel it, especially at night and in the morning, as haze has already blanketed the city of Pontianak,” the mayor, Edi Rusdi Kamtono, said on Monday, as reported by AFP news agency.
In addition to the six worst-hit provinces, a fire burned for nearly a week at Mount Bromo National Park in East Java, razing around 550 hectares of the park, before it was put out on Monday.
