The volunteer firefighters risking their lives to defuse 'carbon bombs'
This report highlights the dangerous conditions faced by volunteer firefighters in Borneo as they combat subterranean peat fires. The fires are causing a regional haze crisis and threatening the integrity of vital carbon-sequestering ecosystems.
Why it matters
The destruction of peatlands poses a significant threat to global climate stability and regional public health.
Share Save Add as preferred on Google Gavin Butler and Ahmad Dhani , Banjarbaru, Kalimantan Ahmad Dhani for BBC Fahrin Ramadhianto has been fighting Borneo's wildfires for a month - and noticing the impacts on his body. The sky grows heavy in Borneo, though not with rain. The air, amber-hued and treacle-thick, is smudged under a blanket of smog that has spilled across international borders – to Singapore, Manila, Kuala Lumpur.
Down on the ground, smoke steams from the soil.
"It hits your nose straight away, your eyes burn – that's more or less what it's like," he says. "People say these fires are extraordinary because of the flames and the smoke. And they're right."
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.
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