‘Like smoking a cigarette’: Indonesia chokes on haze as blazes intensify amid super ‘El Niño’

In Indonesia’s Kalimantan, fires have ravaged tens of thousands of acres, with suffocating smoke reaching Malaysia and putting Singapore on alert Suwadi can barely see five metres in front of him when he steps outside his home in Indonesian Borneo. Each breath, he says, feels “like smoking a cigarette”. It has been like this for weeks in Kalimantan, the Indonesian side of Borneo island, where fires have raged across tens of thousands of acres of land, including ancient rainforest, triggering a trans-boundary haze now threatening Malaysia and Singapore. In West Kalimantan there has been a spike in emergency room visits, with about 5,000 people arriving with respiratory symptoms each week since July, compared with 500 per week in the first half of the year, health ministry data shows. Children continue to go to school and adults to work, but many are suffering from the unhealthy effects of breathing in thick smoke, constantly. “What about babies, the elderly, and pregnant women who are exposed to this?” asks Suwadi. Some classes have been suspended, with parents urging schools to switch to online learning. Fires each year in Kalimantan are often blamed on “slash and burnâ