PALANGKARAYA, Indonesia — Ground and air crews across Indonesia stepped up operations Aug. 28 against dozens of wildfires burning on Borneo and Sumatra, deploying cloud seeding aircraft and water-bombing runs as the government warned that more than five million people on both islands face direct exposure to toxic haze.
Deputy Health Minister Dante Saksono Harbuwono said 13,500 people received treatment for respiratory infections during July and August. He identified the highest-risk groups as children, the elderly, pregnant women with asthma and outdoor workers.
"Extended contact with the toxic air carries the potential for serious long-term health complications beyond the acute respiratory cases already being treated," Dante said.
To date the Health Ministry has distributed more than five million masks across the country. Indonesia has a population of 289 million and is contending with an especially severe El Niño cycle that forecasters have labeled "Godzilla" for the intensity of the drought conditions it has generated across the archipelago.
The National Disaster Management Agency, known by its Indonesian acronym BNPB, said it has dropped more than four million litres of water on burning terrain in recent weeks. On Aug. 26 alone, crews scattered more than 8,000 kilograms of salt into cloud formations as part of cloud-seeding operations. Cloud seeding works by releasing silver iodide, salts or similar particles into clouds to trigger rainfall.
BNPB spokesman Berton Suar Pelita Panjaitan said operations this week produced light to moderate rain in targeted zones. "Cloud seeding remains one of the measures to support efforts to tackle forest and land fires. Its implementation depends heavily on atmospheric conditions and the presence of rain-bearing clouds in the target areas," Panjaitan said. "The ground and air task forces continue working in the field to carry out extinguishing and cooling operations."
Several schools on both islands have closed intermittently as the haze thickened. The smoke has crossed national borders, causing health complaints in Singapore and Malaysia as well.
In Palangkaraya, the capital of Central Kalimantan province on Borneo, two non-governmental organisations have established emergency shelters specifically for infants and young children affected by the smoke. Each shelter can hold only five children at a time. They are stocked with baby formula, oxygen tanks, medicines and a small playground area, with additional shelters in planning.
Katharina Abi, 30, brought her one-year-old and five-year-old to one of the shelters on Aug. 28 after smoke blanketed their home. "There's a lot of smoke at my house. In the morning it's not too bad, but in the afternoon and evening there's so much dust, like there's a fire nearby. It really bothers my breathing," she said. "My children often have coughs and colds, maybe because there is a lot of smoke."
The fires on Borneo and Sumatra follow a well-documented seasonal pattern in Indonesia, where peatlands and cleared agricultural land are particularly susceptible to burning during dry years. El Niño years accelerate that cycle by suppressing rainfall across maritime Southeast Asia for extended periods, leaving vegetation and peat deposits drier than in normal years. The current event has been severe enough to prompt the "Godzilla" designation from forecasters.
Panjaitan cautioned that cloud seeding remains weather-dependent and cannot be relied upon as a guaranteed intervention. Ground teams continue cooling operations in areas where aerial drops have already knocked back active flames, working to prevent reignition in dried peat, which can smolder underground for weeks after surface fires are extinguished.
