‘Worst I’ve seen’: forest fires rage across Thailand, Mekong region

Dry season fires have brought a public health crisis to northern Thailand, including Chiang Mai, as well as much of Laos and eastern Myanmar, as parched bush provides tinderbox conditions for wildfires.

Some fires are also due to farmers slashing and burning to clear land in the quickest, least labour-intensive way possible ahead of a planting season, especially in Laos and Myanmar, where enforcement of bans against the practice remains patchy.

Thailand’s northernmost provinces of Chiang Rai, Chiang Mai and Mae Hong Son have been blanketed by thick clouds of pollution drifting across the Myanmar and Laotian borders.

On Sunday, Thailand recorded over 600 fire hotspots, most in the north, with some snaking down the western border with Myanmar. Hospitals across the country have reported a surge in patients seeking help for respiratory sickness linked to high levels of PM2.5, the ultrafine, toxic particles carried in polluted air.

“The air we breathe is a fundamental right that every person deserves,” Maneerat Khemawong, a senator from Chiang Rai province, told reporters on Monday. “The air quality situation in the northern region has been at a critical red-to-dark purple level for over two months … a trend of worsening conditions every year,” she said, flanked by fellow northern senators pressing the government to do more over the worsening pollution.