Wildfire Safety and Preparedness

Fires Raging Out of Control in Indonesia, Blanketing Islands in Smoke

This image was captured on Sept. 24, 2015 by NASA's Terra satellite, showing the wildfire smoke over Indonesia.
(NASA)

Indonesia's wildfires have gotten so bad that neighboring Singapore recently had to cancel school and residents with breathing difficulties were given anti-pollution masks. Thanks to a new image released by NASA, we can see just how thick the smoke has gotten.

Taken last Thursday by the Terra satellite, the image at the top of this page shows entire islands under the clouds of heavy smoke. As NASA notes, the wildfires creating the smoke in Indonesia have a different makeup than the infernos we've seen in the western United States.

This is because the coasts of Borneo and Sumatra are lined with peat, a "soil-like mixture of partly decayed plant material formed in wetlands," NASA said.

(MORE: Alaska's Fires Captured in Satellite Images)

“Most burning starts on idle, already-cleared peatlands and escapes underground into an endless source of fuel,” David Gaveau, spokesperson from the Center for International Forestry Research, told NASA.

As a result, these fires can sometimes only be extinguished by heavy rainfall, and they produce more smoke and air pollution than many other types of wildfires.

Zoomed in, here's what the wildfire smoke looks like over Sumatra:

Indonesia has been forced to arrest some executives at corporations responsible for starting the fires, Mashable reported. They've been accused of using the illegal slash-and-burn method to clear land for pulp and palm plantations, the report added.

MORE ON WEATHER.COM: Indonesia's Wildfires