Indonesia Deploys Over 69,000 Firefighters as Worst Wildfire Season in 11 Years Intensifies
Indonesia has been battling its most intense wildfire season in 11 years, fuelled by El Niño-related dry weather conditions, Reuters reported on October 14. President Prabowo Subianto has ordered additional resources to be deployed to combat the wildfires. "We are mobilising all our resources and capabilities," said Honi Havana, an official at the Coordinating Ministry for Political and Security Affairs, during a Wednesday press briefing. He said Jakarta has deployed more than 69,000 firefighting personnel, up from around 44,000 in mid-September, and is also testing new methods to put out fires more effectively using special chemicals.
Authorities have been struggling with peatland fires, which smoulder slowly beneath the surface and can re-emerge at any time, said disaster mitigation agency spokesperson Berton Panjaitan. "We must recognise that the only way to resolve this is through sustained rainfall,"he said.
The haze has spread across the region. Singapore's one-hour PM2.5 reading hit a high of 284 micrograms per cubic metre in the western part of the island state on Wednesday, its highest level this year and the first entry into the National Environment Agency's "very high" band during the current haze period; in October 2015, Indonesian wildfires brought PM2.5 levels in western Singapore to a national record of 471 micrograms per cubic metre. The East Timor government said it was suspending face-to-face learning for three days starting October 15 due to contamination by pollutant particles from wildfires in neighbouring regions or countries; East Timor shares an island with Indonesia's East Nusa Tenggara province, where a number of hotspots have been reported. Several states in Malaysia have also been forced to shut schools, and respiratory illnesses have spiked in Indonesia.
Criticism of Indonesia has continued to mount across the region, as Southeast Asian foreign ministers prepare to discuss transboundary haze at an ASEAN meeting next month. On Tuesday, Malaysian lawmaker Syed Saddiq Syed Abdul Rahman called on Southeast Asian nations to lodge a diplomatic protest against Jakarta for failing to do enough to control the fires, and said Malaysian and Singaporean banks should cut off financing to companies linked to land burning.
Source: GSM · USA (original Chinese edition)
Photo: 卫星拍摄的印度尼西亚野火分布影像（2026年8月29日，示意）。图片来源：Wikimedia Commons，NOAA-20 卫星 VIIRS 影像，公共领域
