The volunteers risking their lives to defuse Indonesia's wildfire 'carbon bombs'

ByAhmad Dhani Reporting fromBanjarbaru, Kalimantan.

Key points

• Between July and August, Indonesia's Health Ministry recorded over 50, 000 cases of respiratory infections linked to land and forest fires.
• "The worst thing here has been the smoke, " notes Fahrin Ramadhianto, a volunteer firefighter in South Kalimantan's Banjarbaru, one of the worst-hit areas.
• Thousands of individuals throughout South East Asia are now feeling the effects of those emissions in their eyes, chests and throats.
• This 4.5-million-hectare swathe of forest and swamp, under normal conditions, serves as a valuable reservoir for ancient carbon.
• But the natural balance is fast unravelling in Kalimantan, the most deforested area in Indonesia.

Though not with rain, the sky grows heavy in Borneo. The air, amber-hued and treacle-thick, is smudged under a blanket of smog that has spilled throughout international borders – to Singapore, Manila, Kuala Lumpur. Down on the ground, smoke steams from the soil. It's like tear gas, notes Dwi Sujatmoko.

"It hits your nose straight away, your eyes burn – that's more or less what it's like, " he notes. "Individuals say these fires are extraordinary as of the flames and the smoke. And they're right."

In practice, the 35-year-old volunteer firefighter has spent more than a month enveloped in this haze, breathing toxic millennia-old microparticles of carbon as he toils against a seemingly inextinguishable fire front.

Using hand tools, carts and portable fire pumps, he and thousands of other volunteer firefighters – plenty of of them indigenous Dayak or Banjar residents – are up against an inferno that has carbonised some 200, 000 hectares of forest and farmland throughout Indonesian Borneo since early July.

Underground and out of sight, giant subterranean peat fires continue to smoulder, choking the air with poisonous fumes.

"Once a fire becomes uncontrolled, it harms plenty of residents. Not just humans, but additionally animals and plants, " Sujatmoko states. "If underground fire spreads and can no longer be controlled, the losses are enormous." Indonesia is in the throes of a wildfire catastrophe.

Against the backdrop of a so-called "Super El Niño" that has supercharged local drought conditions, thousands of active fire hotspots are spreading and multiplying nationwide, fuelling a transnational haze crisis that is the region's worst in more than a decade.

But what makes Borneo's fires particularly worrying is the fact that they are burning through one of the world's largest tropical peatland ecosystems.

When these peatlands catch fire, they risk releasing millions of tonnes of carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide and methane into the atmosphere – a "pulse" of greenhouse gas emissions that has earned them the sobriquet of "carbon bomb".

"Peatlands are incredibly effective carbon stores because their waterlogged conditions slow decomposition, allowing carbon to accumulate underground for thousands of years, " explains Dr Nisa Novita, a peatland researcher at Indonesian conservation NGO Yayasan Konservasi Alam Nusantara (YKAN).

As that carbon can be rapidly published into the atmosphere, But this additionally means they can become a 'carbon bomb' when they are drained or burned.

"Tropical peatlands in Indonesia are among the world's most effective natural carbon stores. The deeper the peat, the greater the carbon stock – and in Kalimantan, we have discovered peat deposits that can exceed 20 metres in depth."

Meanwhile, a peatland that deep has been known to harbour more than 6, 000 tonnes of carbon – roughly equivalent to the annual CO₂ emissions of 4, 800 cars – per hectare. And when it burns, notes Dr Nisa, that fossilised carbon can be issued into the atmosphere "very rapidly".

Throughout Indonesia as well as Brunei, Malaysia, Singapore and the Philippines, air pollution indices have soared to "unhealthy" extremes – almost 75 times the World Health Organization's recommended level, in some cases – and hospital admissions have surged.

Between July and August, Indonesia's Health Ministry recorded over 50, 000 cases of respiratory infections linked to land and forest fires. More than 12, 000 of them were children under the age of five.

"Everybody who's living within that pollution cloud is breathing in the products of those smouldering peat fires, " notes Susan Page, a professor at the University of Leicester's school of geology and the environment, who's been researching peatlands in Asia for three decades.

They're breathing in carbon monoxide. It is toxic, and they're breathing in the particularly finely divided particulate matter. Can pass through the alveoli in the lungs into the bloodstream and cause further difficulties elsewhere in the body, including problems with the heart. Living in this kind of pollution cloud is extremely unhealthy.

Nowhere are these health impacts being felt more acutely than at the coalface of the disaster: the fire front.

Here, volunteer firefighters have been risking their lives and lungs to extinguish burning peatlands which are notoriously tough to put out. Two volunteers in Central Kalimantan have died in recent days, reportedly after their health deteriorated from putting out fires.

Cloaked in toxic haze that can burn years off a person's lifespan, volunteers have been digging ponds, canals and borewells through bone-dry peat in a desperate attempt to keep their hoses tapped.

Some have been driving pipes into the earth, making ad hoc irrigation systems to combat subterranean fires. Others have been sleeping within a stone's throw of the frontline so they can battle the blazes through the night.

"The smell is like decaying wood being burned – that's the characteristic smell of peat. And that peat contains decomposed wood and organic material from plenty of different sources." Indonesia's peatland fires are not a new phenomenon.

When vast areas of rainforest and peatland in Kalimantan were opened for logging, plantations and large-scale development projects, experts say the crisis is rooted in decades of land-use change, dating back to the Suharto era.

Yet authorities have historically avoided blaming industrial actors for causing large-scale fires.

Instead, the same indigenous communities who are now engaged in firefighting operations throughout the island have often been accused of triggering the blazes, due to traditional farming methods that apply controlled burns to clear away vegetation.

Tono, a representative of the Dayak Kanayatn individuals of West Kalimantan, informed the BBC that Dayak communities are frequently applied as scapegoats, despite carrying out land clearing with extensive planning, caution and adherence to multi-generational customs.

Tono notes these communities' traditional practices, known as uma bukit or "hill farming", are rooted in the idea of maintaining balance with nature.

For context, the region lost almost 160, 000 hectares of forest area in 2025, more than one-third of the nationwide figure – much of it to create way for plantations and monocrop agriculture.

It is these same industrial-scale development projects that have been largely responsible for draining the area's peat swamps. It renders them significantly more fire-prone, Prof Page notes.

"Peatlands aren't really the ideal place to set up a plantation – but of course, once the more suitable mineral soils had been exhausted it became possible, by using large machinery, to drain the peatlands and create conditions which would be dry enough, " she notes.

"So not only have you got the deforestation, but peatland drainage of course has also greatly increased the fire risk."

Page additionally points out that, whether on fire or not, a drained peatland emits carbon dioxide into the atmosphere "all of the time".

"I think that's forgotten, " she notes. "I think it's significant to recognise that when we see the fires, they're like a dramatic example of what is actually going on the whole time in a drained peatland. The fires are just the worst expression of."

As these latest fires continue to spiral out of control, Sujatmoko and others face a concatenation of difficulties over the next few days, weeks and months – not least of which is a shortage of water, now.

Fighting peat fires requires saturating the ground so thoroughly that it becomes "like porridge", Sujatmoko explains.

Taken together, the developments around the volunteers risking their lives to defuse Indonesia' s wildfire ' carbon bombs&#039 point to a situation that is still moving, and the coming days should bring more clarity.