Indonesia sends oxygen bus to aid residents choking on forest-fire haze
In Palangka Raya, on the island of Borneo, a bus fitted with oxygen tanks has become a refuge for people struggling to breathe as the worst fire season in more than a decade fills the air with smoke; and the health toll climbs past 350,000 respiratory cases.
Published 27 October 2026 · 08:11 GMT
The summary
In Palangka Raya, on the island of Borneo, a bus fitted with oxygen tanks has become a refuge for people struggling to breathe as the worst fire season in more than a decade fills the air with smoke; and the health toll climbs past 350,000 respiratory cases. A bus fitted with oxygen tanks is offering free oxygen sessions of 5 to 10 minutes to residents of Palangka Raya, Central Kalimantan, as forest-fire haze chokes the city.
The three lenses
- WestFrom the United States and Europe, the story reads as a climate-and-health emergency told through numbers: the pollution index, the case counts, the burned hectares.
- EastFrom East and Southeast Asia, the story reads as a neighbourhood problem first.
- Global SouthFrom the Global South, and from Indonesia itself, the story is told by the people inside it: the residents queuing for oxygen, the students protesting at the governor's office, the volunteers fighting fires, the business owner who cannot afford to stop working, and the litigants in Pontianak demanding accountability.
Key facts
- A bus fitted with oxygen tanks is offering free oxygen sessions of 5 to 10 minutes to residents of Palangka Raya, Central Kalimantan, as forest-fire haze chokes the city. Reuters (Oct 27, 2026)
- Indonesia's air pollution index has shown some areas of Borneo and Sumatra registering pollution levels of over 1,000, with readings of 300 or more already categorised as hazardous. Reuters (Oct 27, 2026)
- Respiratory illnesses linked to the fires have risen to about 350,000 cases from August to October 25, the health ministry said, including about 31,000 cases in Central Kalimantan. CNA (Oct 27, 2026)
- Deforestation monitor Nusantara Atlas says fires have consumed more than 1.9 million hectares in the nine months to September, a figure the government has neither confirmed nor disputed. South China Morning Post (Oct 27, 2026)
- The health ministry has set up nearly 500 facilities countrywide where people can access free oxygen and treatment for haze-related ailments, nearly 300 of them in Central Kalimantan. South China Morning Post (Oct 27, 2026)
- Palangka Raya's city health and transportation offices are also running free oxygen vans, two in operation with two more planned, operating Monday to Saturday. Kompas TV (Oct 25, 2026)
What is the oxygen bus doing on a road in Palangka Raya?
A white-and-blue bus parked on a hazy road in Palangka Raya has become an unlikely clinic. Fitted out with oxygen tanks and staffed by medical professionals, it offers residents a chance to be hooked up to a small oxygen tube around the nose for five to ten minutes at a time, free of charge. Medical staff record patients' details and administer oxygen to residents reporting breathing difficulties. Photographs from October 23 show the bus parked amid the haze and residents receiving oxygen inside it. The service was provided by the local government as respiratory illnesses climbed in the Central Kalimantan capital, a city on the island of Borneo. The Central Kalimantan provincial health department said on Instagram this week that the service is intended to help people access oxygen, particularly those experiencing respiratory problems or who need oxygen support amid unhealthy air quality conditions. One patient, Oktawina, 44, spoke with an oxygen tube hooked to her nose. “This is a disaster from nature and there is not much we can do,” she said.
How bad is the air, and how many people are ill?
The numbers behind the bus are stark. Indonesia's air pollution index has shown some areas of Borneo and Sumatra registering pollution levels of over 1,000, with readings of 300 or more already categorised as hazardous. Respiratory illnesses linked to the fires have risen to about 350,000 cases from August to October 25, the health ministry said, including about 31,000 cases in Central Kalimantan as of October 25. The health ministry has set up nearly 500 facilities countrywide where people can access free oxygen and treatment for haze-related ailments, and nearly 300 of them are in Central Kalimantan. Beyond the bus, Palangka Raya's city health and transportation offices are running free oxygen vans: two are currently in operation, with two more planned, operating Monday to Saturday from morning to evening, with locations chosen according to conditions and residents' needs. The vans also provide initial treatment and basic medication, and residents who need further care are directed to the nearest hospital or community health centre. An AFP-based account independently puts the toll at more than 300,000 people with respiratory infections across seven provinces over the same August-to-October period, a scope that fits inside the national figure rather than contradicting it.
What do the numbers not yet tell us?
Several of the most important figures remain unconfirmed or incomplete. Deforestation monitor Nusantara Atlas says fires have consumed more than 1.9 million hectares in the nine months to September, but the government has not confirmed or disputed that figure, so the true burned area is still an open question. The illness counts, too, carry a caveat: they count cases reported through the health system, and they cannot show how many people are suffering without seeking care, nor how severe the long-term lung and heart effects will be. It is also unclear what a five-to-ten-minute oxygen session can and cannot do. It relieves breathlessness in the moment, but it does not treat the underlying irritation, and nothing in the reporting so far measures whether repeat visits are rising or whether hospitals in Palangka Raya are seeing more admissions. Finally, nobody can yet say when the bus will stop being needed. That depends on rain, on firefighting on peatland that can smoulder underground, and on whether new hotspots keep appearing faster than crews can reach them.
Why does a bus full of oxygen matter beyond one city?
Indonesia regularly battles seasonal forest fires, predominantly on Sumatra and Borneo, but this year the infernos are the most intense in more than a decade. An intense El Niño weather phenomenon has driven up temperatures, leaving the country's vast forests and peatlands more vulnerable to fires that have turned skies orange across Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore. That cross-border reach is why a local health measure carries a regional story: the smoke does not stop at provincial borders, and neighbouring countries have raised diplomatic objections to breathing air fouled by fires they did not light. The Bureau has covered this recurring cross-border pattern before, when Singapore choked on haze from Indonesian fires, and the same El Niño dynamics now threatening southern Africa show how a single climate driver can strain health systems on more than one continent, as in the El Niño threat to southern Africa. A bus handing out oxygen is therefore also a signal. It shows a health system moving from hospitals into the street, and it shows the point at which a seasonal problem becomes an emergency that ordinary services can no longer absorb.
Is the oxygen bus a response, or an admission?
Both readings are true, and the tension between them is the story. As a response, the bus is practical, fast and humane: it puts relief where people are, without paperwork, queues or fees, and the van programme extends the same logic across the city. As an admission, it concedes that the air itself has become unsafe for ordinary life, and that the institutions meant to prevent that outcome have not done so. Patience at home is wearing thin. Hundreds of students protested at the provincial governor's office last week demanding a greater response to the fires, local news website Kompas reported, and a separate protest on October 15 demanded serious handling of the fires and transparency in the firefighting budget, with the governor not meeting the crowd. The oxygen bus treats the symptom in public view; the budget and the firefighting effort are judged in far less visible ledgers. Readers should therefore judge the response on two tracks at once: whether the street-level relief reaches everyone who needs it, and whether the firefighting and prevention effort behind it is funded, staffed and explained to the people breathing the consequences. Citizens have already documented what orange skies feel like from the ground, as in Indonesians sharing footage of orange skies with nowhere to escape.
Who else breathes this fire's consequences?
The second-order costs spread well beyond the clinic queue. Schools and teaching have been paralysed by the haze in Palangka Raya, and aviation has been disrupted, with visibility collapsing on some routes. The economic toll falls hardest on people who cannot stop working: one Palangka Raya business owner told Kompas TV that his family's economic activity and health had both been hit, saying, “If we don't work, we don't eat either,” and asking for the fires to be declared a national disaster so help could arrive. Volunteers have joined the firefighting effort directly, including a university student who spent his distance-learning time with volunteer crews because he longed for clear skies. In West Kalimantan, residents and civil society organisations have filed a class action lawsuit at the Pontianak District Court over the fires and haze, alleging negligence in supervision. At an NGO-run shelter in Palangka Raya, residents receive nebuliser therapy and oxygen for breathing difficulties and headaches. One of them, Alexandra Surya Habsari, 43, described a twenty-minute daily commute turned to torture: “We're supposed to be able to see the blue sky, breathe in oxygen, see the sun and enjoy clean air. But when it's like this, what we're breathing is poison.” The land-use economy behind the fire seasons is part of the same picture, including the plantation frontier examined in Indonesia's palm miracle crop.
What would have to change for the bus to stop running?
Four markers will test this story in the coming days. First, the pollution readings: do they fall back below the hazardous threshold of 300, and stay there, or spike again with each new hotspot? Second, the health-ministry case counts: does the curve of respiratory illness flatten as the oxygen points multiply, or keep climbing past the October 25 figures? Third, the city's own decision: are the two additional oxygen vans deployed, and does the programme extend beyond its Monday-to-Saturday hours? Fourth, accountability: does the government answer the protesters' demands on firefighting and budget transparency, confirm or rebut the 1.9-million-hectare figure, and say plainly what it will do differently before the next dry season? Until those markers move, the bus will keep doing what it was built to do: handing people ten minutes of clean air at a time, on a road under an orange sky.
The three lenses
West Lens:
From the United States and Europe, the story reads as a climate-and-health emergency told through numbers: the pollution index, the case counts, the burned hectares. Western coverage frames the oxygen bus as striking human detail inside a systemic failure, and asks the enforcement question most directly; what peatland protection, fire prevention and land-use rules would have kept the air breathable, and why they did not hold in a year when El Niño made the forests drier than usual. The Western lens is the most focused on the regional diplomacy of smoke, and the least present in the daily experience of the haze itself.
East Lens:
From East and Southeast Asia, the story reads as a neighbourhood problem first. Singapore's CNA carried the Palangka Raya report to readers who have breathed this smoke before, and Hong Kong's South China Morning Post added the scale, the burned area, the treatment network, the protests, that turns a single bus into a national picture. The Eastern lens asks what neighbours owe each other when fire in one country becomes air in another, and how many fire seasons a region can absorb before cross-border haze stops being treated as weather and starts being treated as policy.
South Lens:
From the Global South, and from Indonesia itself, the story is told by the people inside it: the residents queuing for oxygen, the students protesting at the governor's office, the volunteers fighting fires, the business owner who cannot afford to stop working, and the litigants in Pontianak demanding accountability. Kompas TV's reporting on the vans, the protests and the lawsuit gives the south lens its spine. It refuses the frame of passive victims: the people breathing this air are also organising, suing, volunteering and demanding a budget they can see.
The consensus
- What we agree on
- What everyone agrees on: a city-government oxygen bus in Palangka Raya is giving free, short oxygen sessions to residents struggling to breathe; air pollution in parts of Borneo and Sumatra has reached hazardous levels far above the 300 threshold; and respiratory illness has surged, with the health ministry counting about 350,000 cases from August to October 25.
- What we don't agree on
- Where accounts differ: the scope of the illness count; Reuters reports about 350,000 cases nationally to October 25, while an AFP-based account counts more than 300,000 cases across seven provinces, a difference of scope rather than contradiction; and the burned area, put above 1.9 million hectares by Nusantara Atlas and neither confirmed nor disputed by the government.
- What we know
- What is known: the fires are the most intense in more than a decade, driven by an intense El Niño that left forests and peatlands drier; the bus photographed on October 23 offers 5-to-10-minute sessions staffed by medical professionals; and nearly 500 free oxygen and treatment facilities now operate nationwide, nearly 300 of them in Central Kalimantan.
- What we don't know yet
- What is not yet known: the confirmed burned area; whether the official case counts capture the full illness burden; whether short oxygen sessions and the van programme can scale if the haze persists; and when rain or firefighting will bring readings down from hazardous levels.
- What we expect
- What to expect: daily pollution readings and health-ministry case updates; the city government's decision on adding the two further oxygen vans; the official response to the student protests over fire management and budget transparency; and any government confirmation or rebuttal of the 1.9-million-hectare figure.
Questions, answered
What is the oxygen bus in Palangka Raya?
It is a city-government bus fitted with oxygen tanks and staffed by medical professionals, parked on a road in Palangka Raya, Central Kalimantan. Residents struggling to breathe from forest-fire haze can receive a free session of five to ten minutes with a small oxygen tube around the nose. Staff record patients' details and give basic care, referring anyone who needs more to a hospital or health centre.
How bad is the haze, in numbers?
Indonesia's air pollution index has recorded levels above 1,000 in parts of Borneo and Sumatra, where readings of 300 or more already count as hazardous. The health ministry counts about 350,000 respiratory cases from August to October 25, including about 31,000 in Central Kalimantan. Nearly 500 free oxygen and treatment facilities now operate nationwide, with nearly 300 in Central Kalimantan, and Palangka Raya runs two oxygen vans with two more planned.
Why are Indonesia's fires so bad this year?
Indonesia faces seasonal fires every year, mainly on Sumatra and Borneo, but this year's blazes are the most intense in more than a decade. An intense El Niño has driven up temperatures and left forests and peatlands drier and easier to burn, turning skies orange across Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore. Deforestation monitor Nusantara Atlas puts the burned area above 1.9 million hectares in nine months to September, a figure the government has neither confirmed nor disputed.
What help is available beyond the oxygen bus?
The health ministry has set up nearly 500 facilities nationwide offering free oxygen and treatment for haze-related illness, nearly 300 of them in Central Kalimantan. In Palangka Raya, city health and transport offices run free oxygen vans Monday to Saturday, with basic medication and referral to hospitals or health centres for anyone needing more. Non-government shelters in the city also offer nebuliser therapy and oxygen for breathing difficulties and headaches.
Sources
- Reuters (Oct 27, 2026)
- CNA (Oct 27, 2026)
- South China Morning Post (Oct 27, 2026)
- Kompas TV (Oct 25, 2026)