Women cover their faces with masks as haze shrouds the business district.—Reuters
Food server Marcus Tan, 28, who works at a riverside restaurant with outdoor seating, said he was worried the haze would agitate his asthma.
“I know I’m supposed to wear a mask so I don’t have another asthma attack. But do you think anyone will want to eat food served by someone wearing a mask?” he said.
Smog was also visible in Kuala Lumpur, the capital of neighbouring Malaysia, over a few days last week but did not breach unhealthy levels.
Singapore last September closed schools and distributed protective face masks as the air pollution index soared to hazardous levels following three weeks of being cloaked in smoke.
Indonesia’s Meteorology, Climatology and Geophysics Agency said on its website that the number of “hotspots” on Sumatra had increased in the past 48 hours.
A hotspot is an area of intense heat detected by satellites, indicating a blaze has already broken out or that an area is very hot and likely to go up in flames soon.
As of Friday, there were 69 hotspots on Sumatra, up from 43 two days earlier, the agency said.
In the Indonesian part of Borneo island — another area where large numbers of smog-belching fires occur every year — there were 31 hotspots as of midnight Thursday local time, it added.
However there were far fewer fires than at the peak of last year’s crisis, when hundreds burned out of control.
Published in Dawn, August 27th, 2016