Indonesia Blames Peatland Damage for Worst Wildfire Season in 11 Years

Updated 09:35 UTC

Four people fighting a wildfire in Bromo Tengger Semeru National Park in East Java were killed on Thursday, the Forestry Ministry said in a statement on Friday. Two others suffered severe burns and are receiving medical treatment. The ministry said the group was trapped by thick smoke and fast moving flames. It expressed condolences and said safety on the fire lines had to come first, including tracking the wind and keeping evacuation routes open.

Satellite monitoring counted 799 high confidence hotspots across the country on Thursday night, up 427 from the day before, the ministry said. One fire can register as several hotspots, so the count is a heat reading, not a count of separate fires.

President Prabowo Subianto has approved accepting help from neighbouring countries, Foreign Minister Arrmanatha Nasir said on Friday. Technical talks are under way inside the disaster agency BNPB. Its new chief, appointed on Thursday, is reviewing the offers and will decide which ones can be sped up. Malaysia offered last month to send three helicopters, an aircraft and 52 people, and there has been no follow up since. Singapore has also said it is ready to help.

Indonesia's government on Thursday blamed damaged peatlands left by old food estate projects for the worst wildfire season the country has seen in 11 years. A senior official said the state will restore the peat ecosystem while fires keep burning across Sumatra and Kalimantan and thick haze drifts into neighbouring countries.

The scale is hard to miss in the air quality numbers. In Katingan district in Central Kalimantan, the pollution index read nearly 1,600 early on Thursday. In Palangka Raya, the provincial capital, it read nearly 1,300. A reading of 300 is already classed as hazardous. BBC footage this week showed orange smog hanging over Palangka Raya as wildfires raged nearby, and residents told local reporters the sky had turned yellow and daily life had slowed to a crawl.

The worst season since 2015

Officials say this is the most intense wildfire season since 2015. An El Niño driven drought dried out forests and farmland and made them easy to burn. The fires have run for months. Hundreds of thousands of people in seven provinces have had respiratory illnesses, Reuters reported.

The smoke does not stop at the border. Schools have been suspended in East Timor and in some states of Malaysia. On Wednesday, a one hour PM2.5 reading in western Singapore hit 284 micrograms per cubic metre, the highest this year, and East Timor said face to face classes would stop for three days from October 15. President Prabowo Subianto has ordered extra resources sent to fight the fires.

Why peat fires are so hard to stop

Central Kalimantan and South Sumatra are the worst hit areas. Their peatlands were drained for years by canals built for food estates and plantations. Dry peat burns below the surface. It can smoulder out of sight, flare up again days later, and it gives off thicker smoke than a normal forest fire.

Deputy food minister Hanif Faisol Nurofiq said large drainage works, including a food estate project from the 1990s, changed the peat itself and left much of it destroyed. The protection group Pantau Gambut estimates that 16 million of Indonesia's 24 million hectares of peatland have been made more likely to burn by deforestation and falling water tables. Its 2024 study found that only 3 percent of peatland damaged by fires between 2015 and 2019 had been restored as forest, while 54 percent had become monoculture plantations, mainly oil palm.

What the government says it will do

Hanif said the government aims to drill wells that rewet the peat and to run water canals better, work he described as simple but neglected for years. In Palangka Raya, dozens of residents protested outside the governor's office on Thursday and asked for a stronger response. One resident, a 46 year old man named Adinata, told Reuters the sky had turned very yellow, people were going out far less, and everyone was hoping for rain.

Rain, in the end, is what usually ends a season like this. Until it comes, the test is whether the wells, canals and fire crews can keep the peat wet enough to stop the ground itself from burning.