00:02We're in Katapang, which is in the Indonesian province of West Kalimantan on the island of Borneo.
00:08And I'll show you this. We're with Mangala Agni there, the forestry firefighting service.
00:13What they're doing right now is trying to put out a peatland fire.
00:16In fact, this fire has just started within the last few hours or so.
00:20These types of peatland fires are notoriously difficult to put out
00:24because these are thick layers of vegetation.
00:26You might not see flames on the top, but really there's embers that could be burning metres below ground.
00:33It's fires like this one that have caused such large swaths of toxic smoke haze
00:38that has engulfed much of the island of Borneo and really transcended boundaries.
00:43In fact, we've even seen smoke go as far as the Philippines.
00:46But parts of Malaysia, Brunei and even Singapore have received smoke haze from Indonesia
00:52from this forest fire season.
00:54There's been at least more than 200,000 hectares of land that is burnt in these forest fires.
01:00What's underpinning this is the Super El Niño, which is really charging drought and fire conditions here in Indonesia.
01:08Now this toxic smoke haze, of course it's here because we're right near a fire ground,
01:12but it's engulfed cities and air quality has really gone well beyond that hazardous mark on the air quality index.
01:21Tens of thousands of people have been admitted for respiratory issues, thousands admitted to hospital as well.
01:27Now the Indonesian forestry ministry has arrested at least 70 people on suspicion of lighting fires.
01:33It's quite common consensus that many of these fires are started by people who are conducting land clearing operations,
01:40say for palm oil plantations or for roads and so on.
01:45And the forestry ministry has said that this month, September, because of these Super El Niño conditions,
01:50this month is going to be the hardest month that they're going to have to contend with.
01:54So these fires, these forest and land fires are well and truly out of control, difficult to contain.
02:00But these firefighters on the ground like this are doing what they can to really try and get a firm
02:05grip on this situation.
