Super El Niño fuels Indonesia's worst fire season, choking Southeast Asia with toxic haze

Andri Susanto has spent the last three months on the island of Borneo fighting fires that refuse to stay dead. He and his crew from Manggala Agni work the peatlands—those thick, waterlogged layers of decomposed plant matter that burn in ways most people don't understand. The flames may vanish from the surface, but embers smolder metres underground, invisible and patient. When Susanto's team finally seemed to have a fire under control on the outskirts of Ketapang in West Kalimantan, some of his exhausted crew had to stay through the night anyway, watching for the fire to flare back to life. It probably would.

This fire season feels different to Susanto than 2015, the year that choked Southeast Asia with smoke and became a regional trauma. "Conditions in 2026 are indeed worse than in 2015," he said. The super El Niño bearing down on Indonesia has been relentless. Water sources that should sustain the land have simply dried up. Across the Indonesian provinces of Kalimantan, fires have been burning for months now, and the forestry ministry's warning is stark: September will be the hardest month yet. At least 200,000 hectares have already burned—nearly three times the size of Singapore—though that figure doesn't yet include August. The season isn't finished. Forestry Minister Raja Juli Antoni called September "the field of struggle."

From above, the West Kalimantan capital of Pontianak has nearly vanished. A thick, toxic haze has swallowed the city and vast stretches of Borneo. Residents who have lived with seasonal smoke their whole lives say this is different. Fatmawati stood in line at a water distribution point in Pontianak with dozens of other families, filling containers with treated water because the rain hasn't come. Her home's rainwater supply ran dry months ago. When it did rain once, the dust from the haze on her roof turned the water black. Her children are coughing, their noses running. Bambang Supriyono, another resident, hasn't seen rain at his house in months. "The water is simply gone," he said. "I'm concerned. I feel sorry for my family. But what can we do? It's like this for everyone."

At a health clinic in Pontianak, Dr. Muhammad Arief Tri Hapsoro has been treating a surge of patients. Coughs, shortness of breath, sore throats, fevers, diarrhea, vomiting—the list is long and familiar. "Compared to previous years, this year the number has roughly doubled from the year before," he said. "The haze this year is also thicker. In my view, this may be the worst year yet." He expressed particular worry for children and the elderly. Indonesia's Health Ministry has recorded tens of thousands of respiratory infections linked to the fires. On the day ABC News was in Pontianak, an Air Quality Index monitor recorded a reading above 900—three times the threshold for hazardous air. The meteorological service reported that the region had not seen rain in two months, and PM 2.5 particulate levels had entered the dangerous zone. "In terms of colour on the graph, it has gone to black," forecaster Septika Sari said.

The haze does not respect borders. Satellite images show smoke spreading far beyond Borneo's shores. More than 1,000 kilometres away in Ronda, Cebu, in the Philippines, physiotherapist Yogi Villalon Jumao-as noticed the sky change on the afternoon of September 1st. The air thickened. It darkened. Breathing felt harder. An air quality report showed that haze from the Indonesian fires made Manila "acutely unhealthy" between August 30 and September 2. In Malaysia, the smoke is more routine but no less unwelcome. On Saturday, Malaysia declared a state of emergency in Sarawak, which borders West Kalimantan. Serene Nazari, a hospitality worker in Kuala Lumpur, has grown up with what Malaysians call "haze season." She has lived it her whole life. This year, it changed how she moves through her day—rushing to work instead of walking slowly to enjoy the air, spending as little time outdoors as possible. She has had a sore throat for two weeks. Malaysia's Ministry of Health reported that asthma cases surged 259 per cent in the last week of August. In Selangor, Natalie Loi noticed the haze immediately upon landing at Kuala Lumpur International Airport. "It kind of smells like people are just smoking packets of cigarettes around you," she said. The hardest part, she added, is the powerlessness—watching smoke cross borders and knowing there is nothing to do but live with it.

The consensus among investigators is that many of these fires were deliberately set. The forestry ministry is investigating and prosecuting cases of fires lit to clear land for palm oil plantations and road construction. Seventy-two people were arrested in August on suspicion of starting forest fires. Last week, the ASEAN Specialised Meteorological Centre activated its highest trans-boundary haze alert for the southern part of Southeast Asia. Air quality stations across West and South Kalimantan, central and southern Sumatra, and western Sarawak recorded unhealthy to hazardous levels. The region is connected in ways that make one country's fire season everyone's crisis. Jumao-as, watching smoke from fires so far away reach his home, understood this viscerally. The question now is whether September will break the system entirely, or whether the rains will finally come.