Haze brings cloud of gloom to SE Asia

Haze brings cloud of gloom to SE Asia

By Stefan Klein

SINGAPORE (DPA): Last Thursday, 7 a.m. The sooty cloud of smoke has not completely obscured our view of the house next door. You can see as far as usual from our terrace -- to the big, white apartment blocks on the other side of Queensway, about 400 or 500 meters away.

But today the television is warning that there is a PSI level of 109. PSI stands for Pollutants Standard Index, and in Singapore it has become the phrase of the year.

The term is now just as familiar as the morning routine of switching on the television for the latest air pollution level, the PSI level on Channel Five.

A PSI of 109 is not good, but it is not dangerous. It is on the borderline between mediocre and dangerous. Mother-in-law (aged 76) and son-in-law (allergy sufferer) decide to have breakfast on the terrace as usual.

But it is a bit depressing. You get yourself an exotic posting and the least you can expect is picture postcard blue skies. Instead, the sky here looks like gray soup, about as attractive as a November sky in Germany's industrial heartland in the 1970s.

"Have you got a tan yet?" a relative asked sports teacher Thomas Teichert on the phone. He was posted to the German school in Singapore last August. But how are you supposed to get a tan when the sun never appears, or else is barely visible like a dim light through a milk glass?

Teichert will not be giving any sports lessons today. There is no gymnasium so classes have to be taken outdoors, and they only take place when the PSI is under 100.

Robert Anzeneder, from Bavaria, Germany, is also new to the region. He has been head of the German school in Kuala Lumpur since July.

He too was looking forward to a posting in a warm country and blue skies. But after the first two weeks he found himself in the middle of a crisis and "just prayed" for the school holidays to come.

That was when the smoke from the forest and bush fires in Sumatra was constantly being blown over the Malacca Strait to Kuala Lumpur, when American officials were flown home and the French School was closed down for a week.

"Why not the German school too?" infuriated parents wanted to know. Many took their children away from the region, school numbers fell from 210 to 160.

Now school numbers have gone back up to 185. School sports, canceled for weeks before the holidays, are back on the curriculum. The children, who earlier were being virtually shut away in air-conditioned classrooms, are now allowed back in the school yard during breaks.

The PSI in Malaysia -- or API as it is called there -- is now considerably better than in Singapore. But that does not mean the intensity of the fires has abated -- they continue to rage.

It just depends on the wind direction how much the neighboring countries suffer from the haze. If the meteorologists have predicted correctly, they will blow north and north-west to Singapore again at the beginning of next week.

That's the way it is these days. The pollution levels go up and down like a yo-yo. A PSI of under 50 would be normal for Singapore, but it has only been that low twice this month.

But the levels have not been dramatically high. A PSI of 300 would be dangerous, schools would have crisis meetings, and if the level was over 150 for two days running -- which has not happened yet -- parent-teacher representatives would meet.

The problem is that people find themselves in a gray zone, not just in terms of climate but also health. The decisive factor for air pollution is currently the PM10 level, which records the level of airborne particles arising from the fires. Yet next to nothing is known about the long-term effect of these tiny particles.

"There is not a single long-term scientific study on this issue," said Dr Wolfgang Benkel, the German Foreign Office's resident medic in the region, based in Jakarta. In this vacuum, grat uncertainly has spread.

The doctor ought to know, because he has visited numerous Germans in the region this week. He reported that even allergy sufferers have not been affected.

Only his visit to Manila was uncomfortable, he said. There is no haze there, just the usual cocktail of car and industry fumes on a scale that is also typical in Bangkok and New Delhi.

For want of definite medical knowledge, people can only rely on their own perceptions -- and they differ greatly.

For fear of the possible long-term effects, 17 kindergarten pupils out of 630 did not return to the German school in Singapore after the Autumn holiday on health grounds.

But Juergen Schumann, the school principal, is more worried about what he describes as the Remembrance Sunday mood, a reference to the day on which the war dead are commemorated in Germany. "The haze upsets my state of mind more than my breathing."

Many pupils feel the same way. The pair sent to school by their parents wearing breathing masks quickly took them off on arrival because -- certainly among healthy pupils -- it is their souls which are suffering rather than their physical health.

It must be significant if pupils suddenly write poems such as the following: "Fire blazed through the forests,/ Leaving behind its deadly trail. / It burned away the farmers' fields,/ As it cut down everything in its wake./ It engulfed the lake and seas,/ with it's thick band of smoke./ The sun has disappeared,/ And so have our smiles."

An apocalyptic mood hangs over the region and appears to be growing constantly. the gloom is now dominating the negative headlines.

Currency depreciation, oil slick, haze -- in the Bible there were 10 plagues, but these three seem to be enough for the Southeast Asians who are so used to success.

Only the psychiatrists are happy as people seek help to relieve their gloom and melancholy. Many people feel depressive because they are not used to the sun never shining.

But that does not mean that Singapore or Kuala Lumpur should be avoided, and certainly not Jakarta. In the capital of the country where the fires are burning, the sky is blue. There is the usual Jakarta smog, but nothing out of the ordinary and certainly not a haze.

"Should we really come?" German friends of a Hamburg businessman living in Jakarta wanted to know over the telephone. "The travel agent gave us the chance to cancel."

It was not the first worried call from Germany. "Are you still alive? Is it burning in front of your house?" friends and relatives ask. "If you say so," the Hamburger said into his mobile phone. "But we are sitting round the pool in the sun."

Jakarta is on the island of Java, but it is neighboring Sumatra and Borneo which have been mainly affected by the fires. The Hamburgers' friends decided to come, and had a sunny holiday. Last Thursday, 3 p.m. The PSI level in Singapore has risen to 167, worse than it has been for a long time. Four more pupils have been taken out of the German school by their parents and put on a flight home.

The 14 employees at the German embassy have been told that they may take five days off in the nearest haze-free region to relax and take a deep breath. The nearest haze-free zone is the holiday resort of Bali, Indonesia. The Foreign Office will pay for the flights.

At home we close the terrace door. Our daughter will have to go without her riding lesson. But school principal Anzeneder in Kuala Lumpur sounds happy, showing the pollution variation in the region. "PSI 71," he said. "Everything's fine." 71 is virtually normal for Kuala Lumpur.

And so the yo-yo game continues, and it will not end until the eagerly awaited monsoon season starts in Indonesia and puts an end to the drought.

Jakarta is now paying the price for sitting on its high horse for so long, declaring the fires a natural catastrophe and only very hesitantly accepting foreign help to fight the fires.

For in the meantime, the fires have run out of control. They can no longer be put out except by extensive rainfall. Leave the Hercules C-130, it is only symbolic, a drop in the ocean.

Wait for the rain, dream of Sydney. Nearly all the teachers at the German School in Singapore took a last-minute flight to somewhere with better air quality for the autumn break.

Ironically, the PSI levels fell dramatically in that very week and then rose again punctually for the return of school. "The Haze is Back," the newspaper headlines announced.

School principal Anzeneder in Kuala Lumpur originally planned to take a trip to Borneo, but the flights were booked out. He flew to the Maldives instead. Anyone who knows the smoke is not desperate to see the fire.