Overview
- Indonesia is experiencing an unusually severe fire season driven by El Niño, with more than 200,000 hectares burned between January and July and 95,000 hectares lost in July alone.
- A 17-year-old volunteer, known as Rudiyansah, has gone viral for wearing a Superman costume while helping his father's volunteer brigade fight peat and forest fires near Palangkaraya.
- On Monday, the Forestry Minister called him a 'forest hero' after a video of him watering smouldering ground gained millions of views and national media attention.
- Police say they have arrested 72 suspected arsonists using satellite evidence and rescue teams have moved about 60 orangutans away from threatened centers as heavy smoke closed hundreds of schools.
- Peat fires used in illegal land clearing are especially hard to extinguish and produce persistent smoke that harms health and cross-border air quality, making local volunteers and stepped-up enforcement central to short-term response.