Smoke and haze

Imagine living in a city where instead of a dry season you had a smoke season. Imagine for over two months having the airport closed due to low visibility. And not only the airport. Sometimes the roads into town are also closed, even river traffic has difficulty due to poor visibility. Imagine having to frequently use headlights to drive around town in the daytime. Imagine school being cancelled for days at a time because the smoke is so thick that there is a real danger of children being hit by cars on their way to and from school. Not to mention the air quality in unairconditioned schools. People who can afford it leave town for the season. But most must stay.

I was planning to go there this week for a workshop, but was informed today that the workshop has been cancelled. The area covered by smoke is steadily decreasing as the rains finally begin to fall. But this city is right in the heart of it and so far the particulate matter in the air is still well in the dangerous zone, and the airport is still closed.

According to the local news, the government is renting two water bomber planes from the former Sov.U. The planes can scoop up 12 tons of seawater and fly in to the worst of the fires and dump it. Friday the pilots said they were were disappointed because they had not been able to get to the worst burning places due to poor visibility. Saturday one of the planes slid off the runway in a neighboring city and is now awaiting repairs. It was thought that poor visibility was the major contributing factor to the accident.

The smoke is the result of farmers and plantation owners burning the land off every year as a cheap and convenient way of clearing it. Because there is so much peat, the peat continues to smolder long after the surface fire has gone out and only a period of substantial sustained rainfall puts it out.