PENUKAL ABAB LEMATANG ILIR, Indonesia — Sumanti raced her motorcycle past the rubber trees as flames spread through the dry brush. No one had picked up the phone as the wildfire continued to grow out of control on Sept. 5. “The fire is already approaching our land,” Sumanti, 30, cried out as she drove past a bystander, her voice cracking as she pressed on to find her family. Within half an hour, Sumanti’s relatives had encircled the fire with 35-liter (9-gallon) canisters of water and a sprayer, the kind the family ordinarily used to disperse fertilizer over the soil. The family of four worked together, scrambling back and forth for hours to haul water from the partially dried-out swamp among the rubber trees. For two hours, they battled to hold back the flames, but the fire kept cracking through the bamboo and brush. A paye in Tanjung Era, PALI Regency, has dried up. A paye is a source of clean water located amidst forests and plantations. Image by Muhammad Akbar/Mongabay Indonesia. Economic damage Sumanti belongs to one of six families who depend on rubber trees and latex production in Talang Turunan Gajah, a hamlet in the village of Tempirai here in South Sumatra province. As in much of Sumatra and Borneo, the six families here find themselves on the frontline of a wildfire crisis intensified by the El Niño weather phenomenon, as fires spread across the region. Smoke from Indonesia’s wildfires has crossed borders into Malaysia and Singapore, leading to…This article was originally published on Mongabay

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