‘Looks like Mars’: Toxic smog from Indonesia wildfires sparks health crisis, protests

Almost every day for months, Indonesian schoolteacher Natanael Undas has gazed up at smoke-filled skies in apocalyptic shades of yellow and orange.

“It looks like Mars, like we’re living on another planet,” said Undas, whose home in central Kalimantan province is at the heart of devastating wildfires generating toxic smog in Indonesia and across Southeast Asia.

Although his family keeps the windows shut at all times, the noxious smoke penetrates the house anyway, sending Undas’ 2-year-old daughter into constant sneezing fits amid a spike in respiratory illnesses in haze-affected regions.

Wildfires are nothing new in Indonesia, whose forests and peatlands are set ablaze each year as family and commercial farms clear land using traditional “slash and burn” methods. But the fires this year are far worse than usual, said Undas, who has been documenting Indonesia’s air quality on Instagram since 2014, as heat and drought aggravated by a “super” El Niño weather pattern make this the country’s worst fire season in over a decade.

Wildfire smoke covers Indonesia skies in orange haze

The unrelenting haze from the fires has affected millions of people in the region since they started in July, closing schools in multiple countries and spurring arguments about…

Original source: https://www.nbcnews.com/business