Indonesian city runs free oxygen buses as country's worst fires in over decade choke residents

Palangka Raya, a city on Indonesian Borneo, is running free buses fitted with oxygen tanks to help residents choking on haze from the country's most intense forest fires in more than a decade.

Medical staff on the buses fit residents with a small oxygen tube around the nose for five to 10 minutes at a time, Reuters reported from Palangka Raya, the capital of Central Kalimantan Province.

"The service is intended to help people access oxygen, particularly those experiencing respiratory problems or who need oxygen support amid unhealthy air quality conditions," the Central Kalimantan provincial health department said on Instagram.

The city government launched the service on Oct. 16 with two buses, each carrying seven oxygen cylinders, local news site Prokalteng reported. Mayor Fairid Naparin said on Oct. 24 that the fleet had grown to four.

The provincial government has also converted four of its education department's buses into free oxygen buses, the department said on its website.

Medical staff on one white-and-blue bus recorded patients' details and gave oxygen to residents reporting breathing difficulties. One of them, Yuda, told Reuters that most of the people who came to the bus were coughing or having trouble breathing.

"This is a disaster from nature and there is not much we can do," said Oktawina, 44, who like many Indonesians goes by one name, with an oxygen tube hooked to her nose.

A resident receives oxygen on a free oxygen bus run by the city government amid wildfire haze in Palangka Raya, Indonesia, Oct. 23, 2026. Photo by Reuters

Another patient, Purnasari, 31, said she had been feeling tightness and coughing after going out lately, and that the thick yellowish smoke that morning had made her breathing feel tight.

Siti Jumiati, who also used one of the buses, said she had long been battling red, burning eyes, a sore throat and a cough. "Today, on this bus, I can get help breathing for free," she told AFP on Oct. 24.

The health ministry said it has set up nearly 500 facilities nationwide where people can get free oxygen and treatment for haze-related ailments, nearly 300 of them in Central Kalimantan.

Fires affected about 1.9 million hectares of land in the first nine months of the year, according to deforestation monitor Nusantara Atlas, a figure the government has neither confirmed nor disputed.

Indonesia regularly battles seasonal forest fires, mainly on Sumatra and Borneo. This year an intense El Nino has driven up temperatures, leaving forests and peatlands more vulnerable to blazes that have turned skies orange across Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore.

Respiratory illnesses linked to the fires reached about 350,000 cases from August to Oct. 25, the health ministry said. Central Kalimantan reported about 31,000 cases as of Oct. 25.

Indonesia's air pollution index has shown readings above 1,000 in parts of Borneo and Sumatra, on a scale where 300 or more counts as hazardous. A monitoring station in Palangka Raya logged 4,055 on Oct. 13, the highest in the country that day and more than 13 times the hazardous threshold, news portal Detik reported.

Rain on Oct. 26 and 27 has brought some relief. Air quality in Palangka Raya stayed hazardous until 6 a.m. on Oct. 27 before improving to unhealthy from 7 a.m., Neng Arini, a forecaster at the BMKG weather agency's Tjilik Riwut station, told Indonesian news site Kompas.

Hundreds of students protested at the Central Kalimantan governor's office on Oct. 19, demanding that the fires be declared a national disaster, the news site reported. Protesters returned on Oct. 23, but Governor Agustiar Sabran did not come out to meet them.