Southeast Asia breathes sigh of relief as rains ease smog crisis

Persistent rains have cleared the air across vast stretches of Southeast Asia that have choked for weeks on hazardous smoke from Indonesian fires, with officials expressing hope Thursday the crisis could soon end. Parts of Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore enjoyed the cleanest air in two months, while affected areas of the Philippines and Thailand also gained a respite from pollution that has sickened hundreds of thousands, disrupted air travel and fuelled anger at Jakarta.
"We can see clouds again!" Singapore Defence Minister Ng Eng Hen gushed in a Facebook posting that include a picture of now-unfamiliar blue skies taken from his office. "I am sure that all of us in Singapore woke up this morning and felt so good that we had clear blue skies again." Malaysia's top weather forecaster declared the region's rainy season - crucial to putting out the annual outbreak of smoke-belching Indonesian forest and agricultural fires - had begun.
"We should have blue skies and no more haze," Che Gayah Ismail, director-general of the country's Meteorological Department, told AFP, adding that any further smoke would be blown away from the region. The fires and resulting region-wide pollution occur to varying degrees each year during the dry season as vast Indonesian plantation lands are illegally cleared by burning.
Experts had warned that this year's outbreak was on track to become the worst yet due to bone-dry conditions caused by the El Nino phenomenon, which alters weather patterns across the Pacific basin. Fears had grown that the rainy season could be delayed for months, prolonging the health and environmental disaster. Indonesian authorities say 19 people have died either fighting the fires or due to the smoke, and that half a million Indonesians are suffering from respiratory illness.
Indonesian officials are yet to declare that the corner had been turned in the battle against the haze. But its disaster agency spokesman Sutopo Purwo Nugroho said recent rainfall on the huge islands of Sumatra and Borneo - where hundreds of fires have smouldered since July - has dramatically reduced the smoke, and that more precipitation was expected. Affected communities "welcomed this with joy and said grace after two months of being held captive to haze", Sutopo said in a statement. The rains there included both natural and artificially induced showers from cloud-seeding, he added.