The volunteers risking their lives to defuse Indonesia's wildfire 'carbon bombs'

ByAhmad DhaniReporting fromBanjarbaru, KalimantanImage source, Ahmad Dhani for BBCImage caption, Fahrin Ramadhianto has been fighting Borneo's wildfires for a month - and noticing the impacts on his body.The sky grows heavy in Borneo, though not with rain. The air, amber-hued and treacle-thick, is smudged under a blanket of smog that has spilled across international borders – to Singapore, Manila, Kuala Lumpur. Down on the ground, smoke steams from the soil.It's like tear gas, says Dwi Sujatmoko."It hits your nose straight away, your eyes burn – that's more or less what it's like," he says. "People say these fires are extraordinary because of the flames and the smoke. And they're right."The 35-year-old volunteer firefighter has spent more than a month enveloped in this haze, breathing toxic millennia-old microparticles of carbon as he toils against a seemingly inextinguishable fire front.Using hand tools, carts and portable fire pumps, he and thousands of other volunteer firefighters – many of them indigenous Dayak or Banjar people – are up against an inferno that has carbonised some 200,000 hectares of forest and farmland across Indonesian Borneo since early July. Underground and ...