Haze Chokes Indonesia's Pontianak as Fire Hotspots Decline
Thick haze has blanketed Pontianak for days, delaying flights and reducing visibility, as officials report a decline in high-confidence fire hotspots.
A thick white and yellowish haze has shrouded Pontianak, the capital of Indonesia's West Kalimantan province, since Friday, cutting visibility to less than one kilometre and disrupting airline services for several days.
At Supadio Airport, departure lounges have filled with stranded passengers as screens showed delayed and cancelled flights. Elsewhere in the city, volunteers handed out face masks to motorists, while motorcyclists and cars continued to cross the Kapuas River bridge through the smoke. Children were seen bathing in the river, and riverside settlements lay under a grey pall.
At the West Kalimantan Regional Disaster Management Agency, officials pored over maps of fire hotspots in a situation room. Daniel, who heads the province's Disaster Information Task Force and, like many Indonesians, uses a single name, said the smoke was not necessarily from local fires.
"It must be understood that this does not mean the fires are occurring in West Kalimantan," he said. "The thick smoke we're currently experiencing, if we look in the direction the wind is blowing, is also smoke carried here from other provinces on the island of Kalimantan that are also on fire."
The Ministry of Forestry said on Monday that monitoring data showed a significant fall in "high-confidence" hotspots — locations strongly suspected of forest fires — in Central Kalimantan and West Kalimantan, with none recorded in Riau province. The National Disaster Management Agency, however, said fires were still burning in several parts of Kalimantan, particularly the two provinces.
An intensifying El Niño pattern and a prolonged dry season have worsened the blazes. The Forestry Ministry recorded more than 202,000 hectares of burned land between January and July, an area nearly three times the size of Singapore. Poor air quality and limited visibility have hampered firefighting, which has been supported by equipment from Japan that arrived on Thursday. Aircraft from regional and international partners, including Japan, the United States, Russia, Australia, Canada and Ukraine, have joined the response.
The haze has drifted beyond Indonesia's borders, reaching the Philippines more than 800 kilometres away and breaching Malaysia's emergency-level air pollution threshold, prompting authorities to declare an emergency last week in the Malaysian part of Boa town in Sarawak state. Air pollution has also affected parts of Sumatra, where schools suspended learning activities. More than 1.4 million students across the country have been affected.
In Pontianak, residents hope the smoke, which has lingered for over a month, will soon clear. "Hopefully, we can pray to God for His protection," said Aminah, a housewife. "May Allah bless us, and may the rain fall again here in Pontianak."