The women who walk into Borneo's fires

In Ketapang regency, in West Kalimantan, the people who walk towards the smoke are mostly women. The South China Morning Post followed Power of Mama, a group of about 150 women volunteers who fight peat and forest fires by hand. They pull on heavy rubber boots, carry water-spraying gear out to the fields, and patrol at night near the palm oil plantations around Sungai Awan Kiri village to find fires nobody has reported yet.

Irma, 39, one of the group's coordinators, said the fear is how close the flames get to houses. "I am terrified that the flames will reach residential areas. It is extremely dangerous," she said. She also gave a plain reason why the group is made up of women. When the air turns bad, children stay inside, and it is the mothers who stay with them. "We are the ones who feel its effects most," she said.

Many of these fires are lit on purpose. Burning is still the cheapest way for a farming family to clear a field before planting, and in an ordinary year the flames stay small and local. This year is not ordinary. Drought and unusual weather meant the fires came earlier and burned harder than they normally do, on peatland, ground made of old plant matter that can keep burning slowly under the surface long after the visible flames are gone.

Why it matters

If you live in a village surrounded by plantations, the first people to reach a fire near your home will probably be neighbours with hoses, not a government crew, so it is worth knowing who does that work in your area and what they are short of. For the women in Ketapang the cost lands twice, once at the fire line and again at home, with children kept indoors by the smoke. A volunteer brigade can hold a line for a while. It cannot be the plan for a season that arrived early and is still burning.