Original subtitles

A terrifying wall of flame

with intense heat and choking smoke.

Fire moving quickly,

obliterating everything in its path.

A wildfire is a raging inferno,

sometimes unpredictable, often lethal.

It may be started by people

but it’s not being controlled by people.

A deadly disaster

impacting life and property.

Wildfires do incredible amounts of damage each year

to hundreds of square kilometers

of forest, farmland and homes,

leaving nothing but charred remains in their wake.

In tinder-dry conditions, all it takes is a spark

to trigger a catastrophic raging inferno.

And due to human activities,

the danger of wildfire is on the rise.

Through experts, we will discover detailed insights

into how wildfires start,

the science of wildfires

and the damage they can do both to life and property.

I’ve been very close to forest fire.

The first thing that you notice is the sound.

It’s so loud. Of course, the flames,

the height of the flames is also shocking,

Sometimes they can be 70, 80 meters high.

So it could be three or four times the height

of the vegetation that is burning.

So it’s no surprise that fires can be so deadly.

And we will hear testimony

from people with direct experience

of the terrible damage wildfires can inflict...

I have two sons and two grandchildren up there,

and I can’t find out anything about them.

What a mess.

...through to what happens after the fire.

How does the land renew?

How do affected people put their lives back together?

This episode of Deadly Disasters

will look at some of the most dramatic instances of wildfire

that have occurred in the last decade:

The devastating Camp Fire in California...

the infamous Black Saturday in Australia...

and the out-of-control slash-and-burn farming

in Indonesia.

The weather conditions are extremely important

in affecting the impacts of a fire

or how deadly a fire is.

If you have very dry conditions

combined with very strong winds,

those usually result in the most devastating fires.

They move very, very fast,

and therefore are difficult to predict,

to fight, as well as to escape from.

Wildfires are not like other fires.

They can differ due to their extensive size

and the incredibly fast speed at which it can spread out

from its original source.

Out-of-control wildfires have the potential

to change direction suddenly

and have the ability to jump gaps

such as roads, fire breaks and rivers.

Nearly 85 percent of wildfires in the United States

are caused by humans.

In some cases, deliberate arson is the cause.

However, carelessness and accidents are just as likely

to trigger a fire.

Casually dropped cigarettes,

out-of-control barbecues,

machinery sparks, downed power lines

and even discarded glass or plastic

can focus the sun’s rays, causing ignition.

Wildfires are not always started by people

and are also a natural phenomenon.

Charcoal has been found in fossils,

which indicate that wildfires have been burning

on this planet since its creation.

Even when people are the source of these fires,

it is nature that can exacerbate the situation

and turn a small flame into a wildfire,

the resulting aftermath of which can be devastating.

The fire came here very quickly,

so, uh, we lost the chance to take the car and run away

because all the cars, you know, one behind the other,

and the road’s blocked.

The first thing we thought

is how to get the baby and run away,

but I think my wife didn’t make it.

Wildfires happen

when the three requisite elements are in place:

fuel, wind and ignition.

The surrounding vegetation and air moisture content

needs to be low enough to encourage a chain reaction.

As well as the temperature and conditions being right,

sometimes these wildfires can be exacerbated

by the type of landscape

and with a lack of forest management.

For example, in California since the 1990s,

there has been a policy of suppressing wildfires

to protect homes and businesses.

This has resulted in the side effect

of a larger supply of unburnt fuel

becoming effectively stockpiled.

Instead of several small fires,

the risk is one big, devastating fire.

The store of excess fuel

is quite literally a ticking time bomb,

as we will see.

One such high-risk area was the town of Paradise,

in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountains

in California.

Paradise and the surrounding communities

were really beautiful areas.

It’s the foothills of the mountains.

There’s lots of trees and wildlife.

The geography of California

can make towns particularly vulnerable to disaster.

They often lie on ridges between canyons.

This results in stunning views.

However, it often means

that there is only one road in and out

that snakes around the mountainous landscape.

This lack of transport infrastructure in the area

means it can be difficult to allow

for quick and safe evacuation.

They had a big fire in 2008

that caused lots of damage to the Concow basin,

and people lost their homes then.

And when I visited with the communities

in the aftermath of those fires,

everyone would point up the ridge to Paradise.

In 2011, a special tax was imposed on property owners

to provide for additional fire prevention.

Although money was raised, it wasn’t put to use in time

to have a significant effect.

In November 2018,

the Paradise Camp Fire

became the most expensive natural disaster of that year,

causing more than $16 billion worth of damage.

It’s so surreal, almost, like, just unbelievable...

how everything is just gone.

Like, it’s not even just our house, it’s, like, our town.

Like, I was born here and I was raised here most of my life,

so it’s like all I knew is just gone.

After literally like 24 hours, everything is gone,

and... Yeah.

We’re talking about the loss of approximately 14,000 homes,

the loss of lives of 86 people.

And so the scale of devastation was disproportionately bigger

than anything they had experienced in previous years.

Essentially it was a firestorm igniting

almost everything in its path.

Strategies for controlling wildfires

have ranged from suppressing them at all costs

to allowing them to naturally burn themselves out.

At one time, human fear and aversion to fires

caused fire control experts to make every effort

to eliminate fires immediately when they occurred.

The buildup of dry vegetation is the main source of fuel.

This can take the form of trees, grasses,

leaves, brush and even buildings.

The greater an area’s fuel load,

the more intense the fire.

In 2018,

the fire risk was particularly high in Butte County.

A wet spring in 2017 resulted in an overgrowth of vegetation,

providing a lot of excess fuel.

They were hit by a long-running drought

with only a fragment of the usual rainfall.

In Butte County, conditions were perfect for a wildfire.

All that was needed was a spark.

One of the consequences

of almost a hundred years of fire suppression today

is that we are experiencing more intense fires

because there’s more fuel in the environment.

November the 8th, 2018.

6:15 a.m.

Pacific Gas and Electricity reported a power outage

on one of its transmission lines

in the hills 10 miles east of the town of Paradise.

6:30 a.m.

Something unusual was spotted

in the area near Camp Creek Road.

Growing fast, a fire had begun.

By the time it was reported,

the blaze had already grown

into an out-of-control wildfire.

The innocuous location, Camp Creek Road,

is now forever associated with the infamous blaze,

the Camp Fire, named for its birthplace.

Although four out of five wildfires

are started by people, nature is usually more than happy

to help spread the flames.

Gale-force winds blew the fire downhill

towards Paradise and the surrounding villages.

Wind helps fuel the fire by providing oxygen

and contributing to the spread of the flames.

In California, you can have these very hot, dry winds

that drive fires at huge velocities across the landscape.

So if the fire doesn’t start that far away from a town,

then it doesn’t have very long to go

before it actually has reached the town under those conditions.

The spread of wildfires is also affected

by the topography of the land.

For instance, fuels uphill from a fire

can be warmed and dried out by the fire downhill,

potentially directing the flow of the flames uphill.

Burning logs and debris can roll down hills,

igniting the vegetation as they go

like organic bombs raining down fire from above.

Once burning,

the wildfire can mow down everything in its path.

They move quickly through dense fuels.

Fires can reach speeds of over 10 kilometers an hour.

In grassland, it’s even faster, 22 kilometers.

The edge of a wildfire is called the front.

This is the transition zone

where the unburned fuel encounters the fire

and bursts into flames,

proliferating the fire’s uninhabited expansion.

The front heats the surrounding air.

Water is vaporized as the fire approaches.

As it heats, wood releases flammable gas

through pyrolysis.

At 380 degrees Celsius, the wood smolders.

At 590, it ignites.

Fires can jump streams, rivers and roads.

In California, the fire hit the town by 8:00 a.m.

By then it was too powerful to fight.

Survival meant outpacing the flames and retreating.

An evacuation was ordered,

but by the time the message got out, it was already too late.

The town was engulfed in fire.

People literally fled for their life

at the same time as emergency services arrived on the scene

and found that there was nothing they could do to fight the fire.

Because of urban creep into existing forests,

forest fires can often lead to property damage.

The term "wildland urban interface"

refers to the growing zone of transition

between built-up areas and undeveloped wildlands.

We’ve gone to lots of wildland fires over the years,

and this is one of the worst that we have seen personally,

so it’s pretty horrific.

Initial emergency service response

had to focus on the evacuation efforts

in an attempt to get people out of danger

before trying to fight the blaze itself.

Evacuation situations had been planned for in Paradise,

but no one had envisioned the entire town

being evacuated at the same time.

And the problem then was that Skyway,

the main route out of Paradise, became a bottleneck.

Spot fires exacerbated the situation.

When the winds lift and blow burning embers

to new areas of the forest, it can start new fires

up to several kilometers away from the main blaze.

During the Camp Fire,

this resulted in multiple fire fronts,

surrounding citizens and cutting off escape.

Once a wildfire has started,

often people attempt to leave at once

and traffic can be brought to a standstill

and escape routes blocked.

Sometimes citizens can become trapped in their cars,

surrounded by the uncontrolled blaze.

Even before the flames arrive,

the fire heats the surrounding air

by up to 800 degrees Celsius.

Fire crews are often faced with an immeasurable task

as they fight to put out the flames

and try to protect those who could not evacuate.

Unfortunately, it is kind of the new normal.

Fire season is kind of now year-round.

So we stayed here and fought the fire.

Thank God we did. We got...

our house left, one of the only ones.

I’d rather see everybody out here.

To me, life’s more important than property.

The high winds

hampered attempts to fight the fire,

with planes grounded until the afternoon,

unable to fight the fire

until much of the damage was already done.

The Camp Fire had just become

one of the largest wildfires in U.S. history,

eventually burning an area of 622 square kilometers.

The fires were burning for almost three weeks,

and, um, it was also a disaster zone.

People were breathing particles, smoke particles,

for weeks until the rains arrived.

5596 firefighters were mobilized in 622 engines,

with 75 water tenders,

103 bulldozers and 24 helicopters.

A huge mobilization of resources was needed

to deal with the fire.

The logistics of the aftermath

were just as complex.

Food donations for survivors managed and donated,

shelters constructed, damaged buildings made safe.

A long and protracted cleanup.

In the end,

the Camp Fire claimed the lives of 86 people,

making it one of America’s biggest wildfire disasters

of modern times.

Five firefighters and numerous civilians were injured

fighting the blaze for 17 days.

Everything is gone, and... Yeah.

But I’m safe,

my family’s safe, all my friends I know are safe, so...

Going back to Paradise after the fires,

it was like approaching a war zone.

There was hardly any buildings left.

The town had pretty much been completely destroyed,

and so it was just rubble and ash.

People still come back and want to rebuild in places

that have been affected by fire because it’s their home,

it’s their livelihood, this is where they grow up,

this is where their grandparents lived.

And they realize there may be fire in the future,

but this is what they call home.

I am so proud of our community,

because they’ve come together to help each other.

We’re building a whole, entire town

pretty much from scratch.

It’s too early to say

how long it will take for Paradise to recover.

A year on from the fires,

Paradise is still clearing the rubble.

There are some buildings that have been rebuilt.

A lot of people living in mobile homes

or temporary accommodation that they’ve established

on the site of their former homes.

They also face the devastation

of having lost a social network.

Neighbors, friends, a community

that supported each other in various ways

have been torn apart because people were evacuated.

And many people now live

in very disparate parts of California

or other parts of the U.S.,

and therefore that community network is no longer in place.

It has certainly been changed in catastrophic ways,

with the memory of the fire

burnt into the minds of the people who lived there.

Wildfires are on the rise.

Most experts agree, in addition

to urbanization and forest management choices,

climate change has also increased

the prevalence of wildfires.

We’re now seeing wildfires in places

where they haven’t been common in the past.

For example, in the Arctic,

which is usually too cold and too moist for fires,

we see warming driving up the temperatures of the ground,

and therefore the ground becomes flammable.

So climate change is now causing more fires

in areas where they wouldn’t have occurred in the past.

Wildfires thrive in drought conditions.

In many parts of the world,

climate change has increased the prevalence of drought

and thus fire risk.

In Canada, for example,

they’ve looked at long-term fire records

and found that in the ’80s and ’90s,

the burned area has about doubled

compared to the ’60s and ’70s.

And that is believed to be because of climate change,

because the duration of the fire season

has basically become longer.

Wildfires that are being intensified

by the climate crisis, but it’s not just here.

Everywhere around the world,

we can see these horrible environmental feedbacks

that countless of people are suffering and dying from.

In one 28-year study,

the University of Utah found the number of large wildfires

in the area of Nebraska to California

increased by the rate of seven extra fires per year.

The area burned each year

also increased by nearly 364 square kilometers.

That’s an area the size of Las Vegas.

The trend of increasingly catastrophic wildfires

also extends to Europe.

In 2007, Greece suffered one of its worst years of wildfires,

burning over 268,000 hectares of land.

Arson was suspected as the cause of several fires,

with the arrest and questioning

of 32 suspected arsonists that year.

Greece authorities considered extending terrorism laws

to cover these twisted fire starters.

Greece is a country that has a large tourism industry

and several locations of historical significance,

meaning that it has more to lose to fire

than many other countries.

For instance, ancient Olympia,

birthplace of the Olympics,

narrowly escaped destruction in 2007.

Around a decade later, in 2018,

Greece is wracked by wildfires again.

Mati, a popular resort town near Athens,

was among those worst hit,

forcing panicked holiday-makers to take shelter on the beach.

In one horrifying incident,

the bodies of 26 people were found huddled together

close to the beach.

This group of 26 lost in the choking smoke

never managed to make it to the safety of the sea.

Candlelit vigils were held in remembrance of the disaster

that killed at least 80 and injured over 150 people.

All the smoke, then we heard the fire engines.

And it was just like

being back in Australia with the bushfires.

It’s horrible.

Across the Pacific,

fire is synonymous with Australia.

Over millennia, the Aboriginal people

harnessed the power of bushfires

to change and shape the landscape.

They set fires and used controlled burns

to manage their environment,

working alongside and with wildfires.

This type of controlled burning

also reduced the fuel load of dead leaves and branches,

resulting in smaller, less intense fires.

Bushfires are integral to the Australian ecosystem.

The native vegetation has evolved

to withstand exposure to fire.

The seeds of some species

actually need intense heat to trigger germination.

For instance, the 100-meter tall Eucalyptus regnans tree

hold their seeds inside small, hard capsules.

A fire will instigate a massive drop of seeds

to fall on the freshly cleared land.

Eucalyptus trees not only benefit from fires,

they actively encourage it.

The leaves and bark don’t decompose,

and the oils the tree produces are highly flammable.

Bushfires clear the undergrowth,

preventing the buildup of fuel

and allow the new plant life to flourish.

The European settlers stopped

the Aboriginal practice of controlled burns.

Because of this, over the last 200 years,

bushfires have become increasingly lethal and costly.

Urban expansion has pushed the boundaries of cities

out into the bush.

Suburban development intermixes building with bushland.

It is these boundary zones

where most of the damage occurs.

One of the most deadly days of bushfires

in modern Australian history

occurred on the 7th of February, 2009.

A date that is now referred to as Black Saturday.

Wildfires raged across the state of Victoria,

causing unprecedented damage

and ultimately killing 173 people.

It was just unbelievable. There was no warning,

It was miles away, the fire,

and all of a sudden, it was just smoke

and everyone just survived the best way they could.

In the weeks leading up to Black Saturday,

Southeastern Australia was baking under a heat wave.

One of its major cities, Melbourne,

sweltered under record-breaking temperatures,

peaking at 45.1 degrees Celsius on January the 30th, 2009.

The high temperatures and low humidity

created tinder-dry conditions across much of the state,

perfect conditions for a bushfire.

Moisture, on the other hand, can inhibit fire

by preventing ignition and slowing propagation.

Higher temperatures are required

to evaporate any water to allow the fuel to burn.

Wildfires are more prevalent in arid areas

with less precipitation,

and drought conditions increase the fire risk exponentially.

The east coast of Australia has the ideal climate for wildfire,

because we have moist conditions during the wetter season,

allowing vigorous plant growth,

and then we have long dry periods,

sometimes years of relatively dry periods

that dries out the vegetation and allows the fires to burn.

In the dry landscape of arid Australia,

Victoria was a ticking time bomb.

A bushfire could happen at any moment.

On the morning of the 7th,

hundred-kilometer-an-hour winds

blasted through the state,

bringing hot, dry air

from the central flatlands.

Black Saturday had begun.

There was multiple fire fronts burning at the same time,

which caused a lot of people to be both misinformed

but also lulled into sense of security,

because they thought fire fronts where burning away from them

instead of towards them.

All told,

almost 400 individual fires

were started on Black Saturday.

Studies estimate that the Black Saturday bushfires

unleashed the equivalent energy of 1500 atomic bombs.

Nineteen thousand country fire authority members

were mobilized to fight the fire.

It took until mid-March

to bring all the fires under control.

The deadliness of bushfires are not just limited to humans.

Much of Australia’s wildlife live in bushland,

and are subjected to the same dangers as humans.

While some animals, such as possums,

may be able to burrow away underground below the fires

and some birds can fly away from burning areas,

this is not always the case.

Kangaroos and wallabies,

known for being incredibly fast,

were often trapped by walls of fire when trying to escape.

But slow-moving animals living in trees

often relied on human help to bring them to safety.

There are several examples from Australia

of firefighters finding koala bears

who have been hurt during fires.

They have burnt paws, burnt noses,

and they take these animals and give them water,

and then bring them to rescue services

who specialize in caring for animals

who have been hurt by fires.

Some of them stay in captivity for the rest of their lives.

On Black Saturday, over a million

wild and domesticated animals were killed.

Even animals who had managed to escape the flames

had their habitats destroyed,

a further danger affecting some already endangered species.

In addition to 173 deaths,

414 people were injured,

450,000 hectares were burned,

3500 buildings,

2000 of them homes, were destroyed.

We heard, like...

We thought it was an aeroplane going across.

A real rumble.

But apparently it was a fire coming up the mountain.

And then the whole sky over there just went orange.

And then we lost our power. That’s when we left.

For a country used to large bushfires,

2009’s Black Saturday was still unprecedented.

There’s one component which is very important

in the deadliness of the Black Saturday wildfires,

and that was a sudden change of wind direction.

For example, in Marysville,

people thought that the fire would bypass them.

But later in the afternoon they realized

the fire was coming their way.

Many lives were affected,

and none more so than the people

living in and around the Kinglake area.

For many in the area,

their homes and possessions were lost in the fire.

However, they were the lucky ones,

as over a hundred people lost their lives.

Kinglake is situated in the Shire of Murrindindi,

and the fires in this region were ferocious

and the damage extensive.

There is no limit for a fire

as long as the weather conditions

remain conducive to fire.

So dry with strong winds, warm temperatures.

The main thing is we need enough fuel

that the fire can continue burning.

Wildfires are capable

of destroying whole towns.

Buildings that had previously stood

and bustling streets can become rubble and debris

in under 24 hours.

Before the fire, Marysville was a lovely community

surrounded by forest, nice wooden buildings,

a lot of tourism.

And then after the fire,

that whole community was devastated.

Many houses had been destroyed,

many vehicles had been destroyed.

So it was just a scene of devastation.

The aftermath resulted

in some of the largest class-action lawsuits

in Australian history.

The bushfire was so devastating,

a royal commission was set up to investigate

all aspects of the government’s bushfire strategy.

This resulted in 67 recommendations,

covering building codes,

planning permission in high-risk areas,

advice for future preparation and education policies.

People are still encouraged to prepare their properties,

and people are allowed to attempt to stay

and defend their properties.

But it’s now been retitled "Prepare, Act, Survive,"

knowing that survival is the crucial part,

and acting in a way that makes people most likely to survive

is now a greater emphasis in these bushfire-prone areas

than it has been in the past.

However, bushfires still remain a part of Australian life,

and in 2019, students took to protesting

against the government’s attitude to wildfires.

Wildfires are an inevitable natural phenomenon,

and can be started by natural means,

including lighting, volcanic eruption,

sparks from rock falls and spontaneous combustion.

On top of the loss of life,

the financial cost of wildfires is truly daunting.

The statistics paint a devastating picture.

For instance, the property damage in the U.S. in 2015

cost more than $14 billion,

$10 billion the next year.

And in 2017, this damage spiked to $23 billion.

Damage to people’s homes only tells part of the story.

The economic impacts of fire are much more widespread.

Firefighting and humanitarian efforts

cost huge sums of money as well.

In 2017, the U.S. Forest Service

spent $2.9 billion on firefighting,

51 percent of its annual budget.

Forest management, research and investment are defunded

when the demands caused by wildfires are so immediate.

Fires are disruptive

and have a much greater economic impact

than just the property they damage.

They upend people’s lives.

Businesses can’t operate, infrastructure is destroyed,

people lose their jobs and are forced to relocate.

Energy and resources are then plowed into rebuilding

just to get back to what existed before,

to maintain the status quo.

One agency, AccuWeather, estimates

that for 2018 in California alone,

the total cost of wildfires

may have been 400 billion U.S. dollars

when you include lost productivity.

That’s 2 percent of America’s gross domestic product.

Tackling the blaze of a large wildfire

is incredibly dangerous and requires fire crews

to have specialist knowledge of the landscape.

Wildfires can change direction suddenly

and, at 23 kilometers per hour,

can move far quicker than people can run.

In high-risk areas, escape routes are planned in advance,

sometimes using the latest technology,

including satellite imagery and drone footage.

These escape routes are marked and kept clear

so fire crews have access and quick egress

from the changing fire front.

Fighting a fire in progress

usually involves dousing it with water

and fire-retardant chemicals.

Logistics are the main challenge to overcome

in order to transport the quantities of water required

to a potentially inaccessible fire front.

Air support is usually called for.

Helicopters carrying underslung buckets,

filled in local lakes, rivers and even the sea,

are often able to dump multiple loads of water

with a high degree of accuracy.

Planes can carry larger amounts of water,

such as a Boeing 737 fire bomber in Australia,

which can carry 15,000 liters of fluid

and still have room for 72 passengers.

The red coloring is from

the phosphate fire-retardant chemicals

used to cool and slow the flames.

On the ground, specialist firefighters,

or hot shots in the U.S.A.,

work to create a fire break.

Water alone may not be enough to stop a fire,

but if it’s starved of fuel, it can’t burn.

Working quickly, often as the fire bears down on them,

crews try to clear strips of land

to create a wide enough gap

to prevent the fire from crossing.

Often they set small backfires.

These are controlled fires to help clear the land of fuel

before the devastating main fire hits.

They quite literally fight fire with fire.

Farmers from around the world

have used fire as a technique to clear land

for thousands of years.

In climates where fires are considered natural,

the vegetation has adapted to grow and reproduce with fire.

But in areas where fires are uncommon and started by humans,

the results can be catastrophic.

Indonesia, for instance, doesn’t have the climate

for large natural or accidental wildfires.

Wildfires in Indonesia differ from other locations,

in that the trees don’t spontaneously burn,

and human effort is needed to spread the flames.

So most fires worldwide are burning vegetation

above the surface of the earth, but in Indonesia

there are tropical peatlands

that have been cleared of their forest

and drained using systems of canals,

and these are much drier than they used to be.

And the soil in these areas

is actually more than 50 percent carbon.

So when it becomes dry enough, it can actually burn.

And those fires can spread even underground.

That’s why they’re different to fires in most places on earth.

Indonesian pulpwood and palm-oil farmers

typically use the slash-and-burn technique

to clear land for planting.

This is because it is significantly cheaper

than removing forest by mechanical means.

These peat landscapes used to be covered in forest

and very, very wet. They were basically swamps.

But now they’ve been drained of water and cleared of forest,

and they’ve become much more dry.

However,

this agricultural practice

can have disastrous consequences.

As, when dried, the drained peatland

is full of carbon-heavy soil that is highly flammable.

Wildfires can be damaging anywhere.

But in a climate where they do not happen naturally,

the vegetation cannot always recover quickly,

if at all.

The rain forests in Indonesia,

the primary forest in Indonesia,

would never recover in a person’s lifetime to fire.

Indonesia obviously hosts

a huge amount of biodiversity,

so, um, habitat loss

is probably the biggest impact of fire on wildlife.

The fires in Indonesia are not like other wildfires,

where the flames can become an orange walls of fire.

So these fires in Indonesian peatlands are quite shocking

when you first see them, because they’re very extensive

and the smoke is coming out of the ground,

almost like a vision of hell.

The peat fires release

a heavy haze which covers vast areas of land.

So the severity of these peatland fires

comes not only from their size

and the duration for which they burn,

which can be months in some cases,

but also the way they burn.

They mainly do so by smoldering combustion,

which produces a huge amount of smoke particles, which are

the most health-impacting component of smoke.

And they can affect the quality of the air

for a huge distance away from the fires themselves.

The amount of haze produced

even turned the clear skies of Indonesia blood-red.

In recent years, the scale of the activity

has created a public health time bomb.

Dust and toxic haze generated by the fires

risks terrible respiratory damage to the local population.

People wear masks in everyday life

to try and reduce the pollutants.

Young people are particularly vulnerable,

because their immune systems are still developing.

Almost 10 million people under 18,

a quarter under 5,

live in the worst-affected areas

of Indonesia’s Sumatra Island.

Women exposed to the pollution

have given birth to babies

with low birth weights and other defects.

People often think that a wildfire kills people

through the flames,

but actually many people die in fires because of the smoke.

The toxic smog released by the fires

even seeped into buildings,

causing schools to shut and hospitals to delay operations.

When we were there, we kind of met two types of people,

people who are just resigned

to living in these sort of smoke-polluted conditions

for weeks or even sometimes months of the year,

also other groups of people who were very concerned

and have mobilized their friends and colleagues

to, for example, try to create safe spaces in schools

and so-called haze-free classrooms in schools.

That means a place where children can go and be educated

and be relatively safe from the air pollution outside.

So they’ve got air purifiers, et cetera, in the classrooms

that are trying to remove the smoke from inside the building.

The deadliness of these fires

has not been contained to Indonesia.

Neighboring Malaysia has had to shut down thousands of schools

in response to the pollution,

and the toxic air has even reached as far as Singapore.

There’s even a center based in Singapore actually

that is responsible for monitoring forest fires

and peatland fires and the smoke pollution

for the whole of that Asian region

and reporting that.

So it’s well understood that these fires in Indonesia

affect not only Indonesia itself but other neighboring states.

This deforestation is driven

by the insatiable international demand for palm oil.

Indonesia is the largest producer of palm oil.

It is used in everything from toothpaste to peanut butter.

Palm oil is the most widely consumed vegetable oil

on the planet.

However, the slash-and-burn method

used to create land in order to grow these crops

is also hindering its development.

The smog created by the fires slows plant growth,

as it blocks out the needed sunlight.

And the heat from the fires

also affects the ripening of the fruit,

as it affects operations at the plantations.

Humans aren’t the only victims of the palm-oil growers’ fires.

In addition to losing their habitat,

the smog is affecting the endangered

orangutans of Borneo.

With an ever-reducing forest,

there is little escape for these animals from the fires.

Dozens of young apes at rescue centers

are contracting respiratory infections.

Animals are subject to the same air pollution

that humans are subject to.

And there’s an orangutan sanctuary in Indonesia

where there are reports of orangutans

having respiratory infections,

and even in the past having been taken to the local hospital

to receive oxygen treatment for smoke inhalation.

The infernos of 2019 had been particularly bad

due to a dry and hot summer.

The fires have destroyed

more than 300,237 square kilometers of land.

The government has tried to step in to prevent these fires.

Environmental protection laws forbid the setting of fires

to clear land.

Police so far have arrested 185 people.

Yet the problem persists.

So one of the issues is with Indonesia,

it’s the nature of the landscape now that is so flammable,

so it is impossible to stop these fires in the short term.

You have to re-engineer the landscape

to make it less dry, essentially.

So that would require changes to this canal system

that has been used to drain the peatlands of water,

for example.

And there’s an Indonesian agency

that’s been set up to try to do that,

but that’s gonna take time and a huge amount of resources.

An additional 5600 troops have been deployed

to deal with the issue,

and criminal charges have been filed

on numerous plantation companies and farmers.

However, the prosecutions look set

to be a slow and drawn-out process.

Other measures, such as water-bombing aircraft

and cloud-seeding techniques have been implemented

to try and clear the haze,

while some have taken to praying for rain

in the hope that it will prevent these deadly fires.

These fires also have an effect on climate.

Basically, because the peat that they’re burning

has actually formed over hundreds

or even, in some cases, thousands of years

from material that’s come off trees, et cetera,

in the former forests,

so when this peatland burns,

it releases carbon into the atmosphere

in the form of greenhouse gases,

which is essentially contributing to the buildup

of greenhouse gases in our atmosphere,

which is ultimately the cause of climate change.

Regulating an industry

that generates so much income for a country

has always been a challenge.

As ever, environmental and financial interests

are at odds with each other.

In Indonesia and elsewhere in Africa,

there’s this rain forest approach.

Trying to find a means of rewarding countries

for the-- Or paying for the ecosystem services

that these great forests provide us with.

Wildfires are a deadly disaster

that we humans have continued to exacerbate.

We have--

About 3 percent of the global land surface

burns every year.

That’s a huge area.

Fires started either intentionally

or by accident have the potential

to become out-of-control raging infernos,

whilst droughts caused by man-made climate change

ensure the conditions required for wildfires

are increasingly likely.

Wildfires can harm us in many ways,

not just the loss of habitat and life.

Deforestation caused by fire impacts the soil quality,

and woodland soaks up excess rainfall,

preventing flooding.

With the trees gone,

floodwaters can wash the soil away

and cause landslides.

Managing fire risk is an ongoing battle.

From policing the illegal slash and burn in Indonesia

to preventing accidents from faulty power lines,

the challenge is massive.

In the Amazon, the lungs of the world,

slash-and-burn fires have increased

and greatly damaged the rainforest and wildlife.

If we can’t fully prevent wildfires,

perhaps we need to consider the approach

the indigenous Australians took,

to find a way to live alongside fire,

not seeking to prevent all fires,

but to respect them and allow small fires

to prevent the larger ones.

We now have a very good understanding

of how to live with wildfire

and how to build in wildfire-prone areas.

So we have very good building regulations, for example.

The main problem is its implementation,

because it’s costly.

And if you might do it and your neighbor doesn’t do it,

your neighbor’s house may still go up in flames,

and then this may become so hot that it ignites your house.

So it’s really a community action

to reduce the risk of fire.

Wildfires are an inevitable occurrence,

part of nature’s cycle.

But as we inhabit more of the world’s surface,

we also build homes in high-risk fire areas.

With population increasing

and the climate changing...

...wildfires are going to remain

one of the deadly disasters that we cannot avoid.

However, with ingenuity,

maybe we can reverse the trend of increasing loss of life

and find better ways to manage the threat.