Share to ClassroomVolunteers Fight Indonesia's Big Peat Fires
Thousands of volunteers are fighting big fires in Indonesia. The fires are on the island of Borneo. They are burning peat. Peat is a kind of soft soil made of old plants. The volunteers use simple tools and small pumps. The fires have burned about 200,000 hectares of land since early July.
This year, the weather is very dry. Peat holds a lot of very old carbon. When it burns, the carbon goes into the air. So people call burning peat a carbon bomb. People took the water out of many peatlands to make farms. Now these lands burn easily.
Smoke from the fires has reached Malaysia, Singapore and other countries. More than 50,000 people in Indonesia got breathing problems. Over 12,000 of them were young children. Two volunteers have died. Heavy rain could stop the fires. But it is not expected until November.
