The volunteers risking their lives to defuse Indonesia's wildfire 'carbon bombs'
Volunteer firefighters in Indonesian Borneo are battling massive, smoldering peat fires that have destroyed 200,000 hectares of land. These 'carbon bombs' are exacerbated by a severe El Niño event, creating a transnational haze crisis that threatens regional health and the environment.
Why it matters
The fires represent a major climate feedback loop, releasing vast amounts of stored carbon while causing immediate humanitarian and environmental crises across Southeast Asia.
Image source, Ahmad Dhani for BBC Image caption, 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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