Overview
- Fires have surged through Sumatra and Borneo with unusually high hotspot counts and tens of thousands of hectares burned, and authorities say the season worsened in July and accelerated again in late August.
- Police arrested 72 people suspected of deliberately setting land on fire and opened probes into several companies as officials seek to trace who financed or ordered the clearings.
- On Monday the government ramped up suppression by deploying thousands of ground crews, dozens of helicopters, authorizing 35 foreign-registered aircraft for water-bombing and resuming cloud-seeding operations.
- President Prabowo ordered that business permits be revoked for firms proven to have ordered burning and called for faster local responses such as drilling boreholes for firefighting water.
- The fires are producing dense transboundary haze that has forced school closures and produced very unhealthy air in parts of Malaysia while drained peatlands remain smouldering fuel that can be hard to detect and extinguish.