Smoke blanketed the eastern coast of rugged Borneo island Sunday as hundreds of fires raged across Indonesia's East Kalimantan province.
The sun was invisible as dawn broke over the region, one of the world's last great wilderness areas, while troops and civilians again frantically tried to halt the advance of the fires.
Soldiers wielding hoes and shovels were attempting to dig firebreaks around the main 125 kilometer (77.5 mile) highway between the cities of Balikpapan and Samarinda as the bitumen melted around them.
Villagers were also on roads north and south of the oil boom-town of Balikpapan, carrying buckets of water from nearby creeks and rivers with levels already shrunken by a months-long drought.
``I don't know if it will help. I am just doing what my husband tells me,'' said Ibu Ari, a farming woman on the highway south of Balikpapan.
``Every year there are fires but now they seem to continue. They can't be stopped.''
Fires are now spread over some 200 square kilometers (80 sq miles), sending haze across the province and blocking out the sun. They have raised fears of a repeat of last autumn's haze that blanketed much of Southeast Asia, causing a major health hazard.
Firefighters say the drought, exaggerated by the El Nino weather pattern, has left Borneo's forests tinder-dry and that fires started by plantation and timber companies and traditional slash-and-burn farmers are razing the once virgin forest.
``Our orders are to stop the fire,'' added one of the soldiers on the same road.
Visibility in Balikpapan was reduced to just a few hundred meters and fresh blazes _ mostly to the west and southwest of Balikpapan, some within 10 kilometers (six miles) of the city _ were razing forests and bushland. But villagers protected their homes by pouring water onto the dust which surrounds the settlements.
Residents and officials here said the fires were believed to have been deliberately lit by farmers to clear land but had got out of control in the hot and dry conditions amid a prolonged drought.
Soldiers worked on major highways, batting down the roadside flames with rakes and shovels while the infernos spread inland.
``I don't know who started it but my fields are finished,'' said one elderly woman villager on the southwestern outskirts of Balikapapan.
Large fires also raged in the Bukit Suharto (Suharto Hill) forest area 40 kilometres (24.8 miles) north of here. Some 3,000 hectares (7,400 acres) had been razed there over the past two weeks after a farmer lit a fire to clear land for a new peppercorn field, firefighters said.
Scores of fires were also burning in Kutai national park, 80 kilometers north of Samarinda, with most of the blazes concentrated around the area's sole major road. Officials said this indicated they had been deliberately lit.
Up to 1,000 fires, deliberately lit by farmers and plantation and timber firms, are sending sparks and hot ash across the province's rugged jungle and forest canopy to start fresh blazes elsewhere, firefighters and officials said.
``It is much worse than last year and it is getting even worse,'' said Hartmut Abberger, of the German-funded Integrated Forest Fire Management Project in Samarinda. ``When anyone starts a fire now, it is almost impossible to control.''
Cloud-seeding efforts by authorities in recent weeks failed because of wind movements. Officials are now pinning their hopes on a concerted campaign in Kutai.
The United Nations Development Program, Integrated Forest Fire Management Project and other non-governmental organizations plan to begin a short intensive training course for a 1,000-strong combined force of troops and civilians.
The fires also threaten the province's dwindling orangutan population and a rare dolphin species unique to the area, environmentalists warned.
The drought and fire have reduced the flow of fresh water in the Mahakam river and its tributaries, lowering their levels and endangering some 200 freshwater dolphins.