PALEMBANG, Indonesia — Residents of Palembang stood shoulder to shoulder in the courtyard of the South Sumatra governor's office on Tuesday, performing salat istisqa—a traditional Islamic supplication for rain—as smoke from burning forests and peatland turned daytime skies dark enough to require headlights on the roads below.
Around 3,000 people attended the gathering, organized by provincial authorities as South Sumatra's fire crisis deepened. Satellite data from Indonesia's Environment Ministry showed the province carrying 1,429 active hot spots, the highest count of any region in the country. West Kalimantan ranked second with 1,226 hot spots and Central Kalimantan third with 811.
South Sumatra Gov. Herman Deru spoke to the crowd before the prayers began. "We have done everything we can and worked closely with all relevant parties," Deru said. "As people of faith, we are also praying to God to send rain so that life can return to normal."
Forestry Ministry data shows nearly 940 square kilometers—roughly 363 square miles—burned in July alone across Indonesia. South Sumatra accounted for more than 20 square kilometers of that figure.
Smoke from the fires has crossed into Malaysia and Brunei, generating complaints from neighboring governments and raising the crisis to a regional air-quality issue. Indonesia has faced similar transboundary haze crises in previous years, but the current El Nino pattern has extended the dry season and increased fire intensity.
Indonesia has deployed 30 aircraft over Kalimantan for cloud-seeding and water-bombing operations. Cloud seeding works by dispersing salt particles into clouds with sufficient moisture, triggering condensation and rainfall that would not otherwise occur. An additional 22 helicopters are running parallel operations over Sumatra, giving firefighters an aerial fleet of 52 aircraft working the two worst-affected island chains simultaneously.
Indonesian police have arrested 72 people suspected of deliberately setting fires to clear land. Authorities are also investigating four companies accused of using fire as a cheap method of land clearance—a practice common among both plantation operators and smallholder farmers who cannot afford mechanical clearing equipment.
Peatland in Sumatra and Kalimantan is particularly dangerous when it ignites: peat can smolder underground for weeks, reigniting at the surface after firefighters believe a blaze is extinguished, and it releases far more carbon per hectare than forest fires on mineral soil.
Photographs taken Aug. 23 showed Palembang's Musi River and surrounding buildings silhouetted in orange-gray haze, visibility reduced to a fraction of normal range. By Tuesday, conditions had not improved enough to lift the daytime headlight requirement for drivers.
Indonesia confronted a more severe version of this crisis in 2015, when fires across Sumatra and Kalimantan burned for months, forced school closures across multiple provinces and sent a smoke plume detected as far as Thailand. Whether the current deployment of 52 aircraft and ongoing arrests will contain this year's outbreak depends largely on when significant rainfall arrives.
