Indonesia wildfire live updates: Toxic haze spreads as 'super' El Niño intensifies

We are ending our live coverage of the haze in South East Asia from Indonesian wildfires. Here is a round-up of what we covered today:

• Government officials and experts in Indonesia say the "Godzilla" El Nino will likely exacerbate the wildfires as the weather phenomemon peaks this month
• The fires in Sumatra and Kalimantan have torced close to 110,000 hectares of land and could burn much more. Volunteers on the ground and firefighting helicopters have been working overtime to fight the raging fires
• The haze from the fires has crossed borders, spreading to neighbouring Malaysia, and farther north in the Philippines
• BBC Indonesia reporter Quinawaty Pasaribu was on the ground in South Kalimantan, where one farmer recalls losing his fruit tree orchard to the wildfires while a young mother says the haze has left her three-year-old daughter sick
• The fires add another headache to Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto, who has been criticised for his handling of the economy and the mass poisonings that have plagued his flagship free meals programme

You can read more in our news story here. Thank you for joining us.

Astudestra Ajengrastri
BBC News Indonesia

Alongside firefighting efforts, Indonesian authorities are intensifying legal action against individuals and companies linked to forest and land fires, according to the director general of Forestry Law Enforcement at Indonesia's Ministry of Forestry.

Officials say penalties can range from administrative sanctions, such as mandatory ecosystem restoration, permit suspensions and permit revocations, to civil lawsuits and criminal prosecutions, depending on the severity of the violations.

Since April, authorities have issued early-warning letters to 20 legal entities whose concession areas showed wildfire hotspots.

The government has also conducted inspections of 32 forestry permit holders as part of prevention efforts.

They have said administrative sanctions remain the primary enforcement tool, but warned that repeat fires in concession areas could trigger a combination of administrative, civil and criminal measures.

We can now bring you more images from Banjarbaru in South Kalimantan, where firefighters have been battling the flames all day.

Liza Tambunan
Jakarta Correspondent

Fires in Indonesia have sent haze across the border to the Malaysian state of Sarawak - where some schools have been forced to go online and where air pollution has reached "hazardous" levels in some parts.

Sarawak authorities say they will begin cloud seeding operations – a technique to induce rainfall over affected areas – this month.

In August, Indonesia had also granted Malaysia permission for its aircraft to cross into Indonesian airspace to perform targeted cloud seeding to help tackle the haze.

Wildfires drive sharp rise in Indonesia's carbon emissionspublished at 12:29 BST 3 September

By Barbara Metzler

BBC Verify has been analysing satellite data from the satellite-based Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS) which shows unusually high carbon emissions from wildfires in Indonesia this year.

So far in 2026, fires have produced an estimated 58 million tonnes of carbon, which is almost double the annual double the average of 32 million tonnes seen by this point in the year between 2003 and 2025.

While agricultural burning is common in Indonesia, CAMS data shows emissions from fires this year are significantly above average.

Over the past week, the highest emissions were recorded across Central, West and South Kalimantan in Borneo, as well as South Sumatra.

Smoke from the fires can contain fine particles and other pollutants, which can worsen air quality across affected areas.

Data from yesterday shows high carbon emissions across parts of Kalimantan in Borneo and South Sumatra, while the highest levels of smoke or ash pollution are concentrated over Kalimantan and extend across the surrounding region.

Astudestra Ajengrastri
BBC News Indonesia

Authorities in South Kalimantan are testing a new firefighting technique designed to tackle one of the biggest challenges of peatland fires: heat that continues smoldering underground long after surface flames appear to be extinguished.

The method, known as undercooling, uses pipes driven up to two meters into peat soil to inject water and a specially formulated firefighting liquid directly into underground hotspots.

Thermal drones are then used to detect hidden heat and monitor results.

"We don't just need to know if the fire on the surface is out. We also need to know whether heat remains underground,” police spokesperson Trunoyudo Wisnu Andiko told reporters. “The undercooling system allows us to cool the source of the heat from below.”

Police said a recent trial in Pengayuan, near Banjarbaru, reduced underground temperatures from around 120°C to 30°C, with hotspots no longer visible in follow-up thermal imaging.

Liza Tambunan
Jakarta Correspondent

Most of the hotspots in Indonesia are spread across Kalimantan, the Indonesian portion of the island of Borneo.

The worst-hit areas include West Kalimantan and Central Kalimantan, which experienced a massive surge in fire activities from July to August, recording thousands of hotspots.

Residents have shared posts on social media of the toxic smog blanketing affected areas, especially in locations with large concentrations of hotspots.

Thousands of public schools have resorted to online classes to minimise children’s exposure to hazardous levels of air pollution.

The haze has also disrupted hundreds of flights in recent days due to low visibility, with the majority being canceled or delayed, while others have been diverted.

The government has ramped up efforts to contain the fires, including by intensifying water bombing operations using helicopters as well as cloud seeding techniques to induce rainfall over burning areas.

Indonesia’s Forestry Minister says the El Nino weather pattern will peak this month, adding that “September is the main fight for us".

As we've been reporting, toxic smoke from fires in Indonesia have been spreading out across neighbouring countries such as Malaysia, Philippines and Singapore.

We've mapped out the spread of the haze using the latest available data.

Astudestra Ajengrastri
BBC News Indonesia

Japanese military personnel have carried out advance inspections of accommodation facilities in Pontianak, West Kalimantan, ahead of a planned disaster-relief mission to support Indonesia's response to widespread forest and peatland fires, local media report.

Around 180 members of Japan's Disaster Relief Self-Defense Forces Unit are expected to be based at the Pontianak Hajj Dormitory for up to 21 days during the operation.

The mission is also expected to include three CH-47 helicopters and the transport vessel JS Kunisaki.

While local officials say the Japanese contingent is expected to arrive around Sept. 10, no official arrival date has yet been confirmed.

Tessa Wong
Asia Digital Reporter, in Singapore

While the exceptionally dry conditions caused by the "super El Niño" are expected to exacerbate the fires in Indonesia, there are also deeper, more structural reasons why it may be particularly bad this year.

The think tank Singapore Institute for International Affairs (SIIA) has been tracking and analysing the haze situation for years. In its report released in June, external, it pointed out that recent events such as the closure of the Strait of Hormuz have disrupted global energy supplies.

This has led to a higher demand for biofuels, particularly from Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand within South East Asia.

All this amounts to more pressure on plantation owners, especially small and medium-sized companies, to save costs and expand plantations - by setting fire to their land and waste.

"Fertiliser and energy price spikes caused by the Strait of Hormuz closure are likely to persist for months even after seaborne trade resumes, adding pressure on agricultural growers and increasing the risk that some may use fire for land clearing or waste disposal as a cost-saving measure," the report noted.

"Growers will need to meet demands for both food and fuel, increasing the risk that some might resort to expansion using unsustainable methods."

Huge smoke plumes over Kalimantan captured in satellite imagespublished at 11:41 BST 3 September

By Charlotte Green and Alex Murray

The scale of the fires can been seen in satellite imagery showing huge smoke plumes rising over the Ketapang area of of West Kalimantan, captured yesterday on the Copernicus Sentinel platform.

The extent of the burned areas over the last week across Kalimantan can also be seen in data examined by BBC Verify from the Global Wildfire Information System.

This data shows swathes of fire damage right across the south of the island. But it doesn’t differentiate between wildfires and human-initiated burning for agriculture, a common practice in Indonesia.

The fires in Indonesia are leaving orangutans "without any food or water", Karmele Llano Sanchez, CEO of the wildlife foundation Yayasan Inisiasi Alam Rehabilitasi Indonesia (YIARI) tells the BBC.

Sanchez was part of a team that rescued a weak orangutan that was found laying on the ground in Ketapang, West Kalimantan on Borneo island.

The orangutan found will be moved to a rehabilitation centre to get more treatment and will be released back into the wild after recovery, according to YIARI.

The wildfires have destroyed part of the habitat of hundreds of orangutans and are risking the survival of the species.

Virma Simonette Rivera
Reporting from Manila

Manila suspended face-to-face classes in public schools on Tuesday due to hazardous smog and haze from Indonesia's wildifres.

Manila is roughly 1,700km (1,000 miles) from Borneo island, where fires are still burning. Residents of Palawan province, an island situated between Borneo and Manila, have told the BBC they have also experienced haze due to the fires.

Air quality monitoring networks in Quezon City, a part of the Philippine capital, registered "Very Unhealthy" to "Acutely Unhealthy" levels across a number of districts.

The metropolitan area of Manila has been blanketed by haze caused by smoke from the wildifres, trapped alongside local urban pollution.

Local authorities have advised residents to wear high-filtration masks like N95s and to stay indoors.

Hundreds of people took part in an Istisqa prayer - or a rain-seeking prayer - in Jakarta earlier this week.

The Islamic prayer is performed to seek rain during periods of drought.

Liza Tambunan
Jakarta Correspondent

Where exactly are the fires?

In Sumatra and Kalimantan, with the majority of them spread across West and Central Kalimantan provinces.

How long have they been burning for?

They have been burning for weeks, with authorities recording a massive surge of hotspot and active fires in August.

How much land has been destroyed by the fires?

According to data from the Forestry Ministry, 107,465 hectares burned between January and July this year. This is a 110% increase from the same period in 2023, when El Nino last hit Indonesia.

Separately, the National Disaster Mitigation Agency (BNPB) estimates that the fires have burned 73,310 hectares of land.

Do we know how many fires are burning in the region?

The BNPB has designated six priority provinces and noted that there are 182 active fires across the two islands as of today, with over 145 of those fire spots in Kalimantan.

How many fire fighters have been deployed?

The BNPB says more than 39,000 personnel have been deployed to take on the land and forest fires.

Fan Wang
BBC News, Singapore

On BBC News's social media accounts, we've received comments from readers across South East Asia about the fires and the haze.

One common sentiment is frustration. Many readers are angry that this happens every year.

"It's an annual event," one comment reads.

"Autumn elsewhere, haze season here. The annual South East Asian weather nobody asked for," another reader wrote.

Some Indonesian readers questioned why their government has not done more to address the issue. Others blamed large corporations for destroying forests.

Gavin Butler
Reporting from Singapore

As we have reported, there are fears the fires in Indonesia could activate millennia-old "carbon bombs", as burning peatlands threaten to release huge amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

Peatlands are waterlogged ecosystems which accumulate large amounts of semi-decomposed vegetation. They have a high carbon content, and can support forest and vegetation growth.

But if they become dry, as we have seen in these recent fires, they can also become highly flammable.

The area that's burning in Indonesia is a major peatland. It is considered globally important due to the amount of carbon that it stores and could potentially release - either as carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas, or carbon monoxide, a toxic gas to humans.

Susan Page, a professor of geology and environment at the University of Leicester, told the BBC that as soon as peatlands are drained, "we convert long-term carbon sinks into a short-term carbon source".

"That means that they then start to emit carbon into the atmosphere, carbon that maybe was accumulating thousands of years ago."

A 17-year-old boy named Rudiyanash has gone viral for wearing a Superman costume while volunteer firefighting in Indonesia.

He started battling blazes after school with his father, who is the head of a local volunteer group.

His suit has drawn attention to the wildfire crisis near his home in Central Kalimantan on the island of Borneo, exacerbated by the super El Niño.

Ahmad Dhani
Reporting from Banjarbaru, South Kalimantan

When I first came to the fire front this morning the air was thick. I saw someone on a motorcycle disappearing into the haze.

Smoke continued to pour out of the ground and trees. I saw the fire team find the burned carcass of a python.

The smoke was a lot. I tried to use an extra mask and layer of tissue, but still felt it penetrating my nose and throat. It didn't take long for my tissues and mask to get wet with sweat, so I just took it off.

The fire team continued to water the smoky soil, because the roots below were still burning and difficult to extinguish. They had to continue to water the soil "until it becomes like porridge", they said.

After watering, one team took turns with the other, then went out in search of fresher air where they could rest.

The sound of helicopters flying low overhead was so loud – dozens of times, back and forth, from the water source to douse the fire.

Indonesia's foresty minister, Raja Juli Antoni, has told reporters that the battle to put out the wildfires is entering a critical phase, as the strongest El Niño in recent memory peaks.

"Our problems are not over. September is the peak ​of El Niño," he said earlier this week.

"September is the main fight for us," he added.

As we reported earlier, experts have warned that El Niño could exacerbate the wildfires with the potential to torch up to 11 million hectares of land.

Read more about the "Godzilla" El Niño here.