Nearly 2,800 kilometers from Manila is Sumatra, one of 18,307 islands of the Indonesian archipelago which this week has been enveloped in what observers have described as “a dystopian future.”
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The description has been for the poisonous red haze as hundreds of virgin rainforest were being burned to the ground.
Those who have gone to videotape the fires described it as a scene from a dystopian future – the exact opposite of Utopia, a society that is conceived to be perfect, where the imaginary society is dehumanizing and as unpleasant as possible.
Sumatra, based on the amateur video, and parts of Borneo, now seen in several countries including the Philippines, is now blanketed in an eerie copper haze.
Posted on Twitter and now viewed more than seven million times, the footage brings home the horror of the fires on the ground and the reality of living in filthy air.
The surreal footage, taken in a village in Jambi, Sumatra by primary school teacher Ayu Putri Wijianti, who wanted to share the unusual scene with family and friends on WhatsApp, pans over a street and home covered in a thick, smoky orange-red haze, as a bird incongruously chirps in the background.
Behind the camera, she expresses disbelief saying: “Believe it or not, this is daytime mum, just 10 minutes before 1pm.”
Skies have turned to what many describe as post-apocalyptic blood red in an Indonesian province because of a widespread forest fire which continues to burn.
Jamaludin, who goes by one name, from the village of Jebus, has been quoted as saying his home has been surrounded by smog for the past three months.
But conditions worsened over the weekend when the sky turned red, a sign of unusually high pollutant contents in the air.
“The thick smoke haze has been extraordinary this past week. At six or seven in the morning it was already dark,” Jamaludin told the ABC.
“The haze has caused smoke particles and dust to rain down to the ground and you can only see between 40 to 50 meters in front of you.”
Haze caused by land clearing fires this year is among the worst the country has seen, with a state of emergency declared across at least six Indonesian provinces.
There have been more than 73,000 fire alerts across Indonesia since the beginning of September alone, causing flight cancellations and closures of schools.
Figures said some 900,000 Indonesians have suffered respiratory problems caused by extensive forest fires this summer, which are believed to have been started by illegal burning to clear land for farming.
In the Indonesian province of Jambi, on Sumatra’s east coast, the haze took on an eerie blood-red hue on Sunday, as the sun’s rays were filtered by microparticles in the air, prompting unsettled residents taking to social media to express their concern.
According to the Straits Times, citing the Indonesia National Board for Disaster Management, the phenomenon is known as “Rayleigh Scattering” and is caused by the movement of haze away from hot spots.
“Rayleigh Scattering happens when sunlight is dispersed by smoke, dust or airborne particles that filter shorter wavelengths and release longer wavelengths that are in the orange or red spectrum, making the area appear to be dim and red,” Marufin Sudibyo, an Indonesian astronomer, told the Malay daily, Sinar Harian.
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