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In a landscape of burnt ground, a teenager works a fire hose… in a Superman costume. The young Indonesian, Rudiyansah, is helping put out forest fires that have torn through large parts of Borneo, wearing his favorite superhero outfit.<\/p>\nIn a landscape of burnt ground, a teenager works a fire hose… in a Superman costume. The young Indonesian, Rudiyansah, is helping put out forest fires that have torn through large parts of Borneo, wearing his favorite superhero outfit.<\/p>\n
The red-and-blue Superman suit stands out against the scorched terrain around Palangkaraya, where he joined a volunteer firefighter group his father formed to put out smoldering peatlands. “I am really happy because I can help the local people,”<\/em> the 17-year-old told AFP, dressed as the “Man of Steel” on firefighting operations.<\/p>\n A video of him spraying the vegetation with a hose went viral, picking up millions of views on social media and earning him the title of “forest hero” from the country’s forestry minister.<\/p>\n Fires between January and July in Indonesia have destroyed more than 200,000 hectares of land, an area three times the size of the capital, Jakarta, the government said this week.<\/p>\n With a drought made worse by El Ni\u00f1o, the government has ordered extra troops and aircraft into the firefighting effort. The smoke has created a thick haze over parts of the island Indonesia shares with Malaysia and Brunei.<\/p>\n Rudiyansah says he wets his Superman costume before each mission so it will not catch fire, then washes it every evening.<\/p>\n His father, Mulyadi, says the haze from this year’s fire season is the worst his volunteer firefighting group has faced since it was founded in 2020. The biggest problem for local firefighters is the lack of water, Mulyadi says, as wells and other sources run dry in the drought.<\/p>\n Drought, which raises the fire risk in Indonesia, is usually caused by El Ni\u00f1o, which shifts winds, atmospheric pressure and rainfall patterns around the world.<\/p>\n The ocean phenomenon stacks on top of climate change driven by human activity, amplifying extreme weather. Scientists have not settled whether climate change will intensify El Ni\u00f1o itself, but this year’s event is expected to be exceptionally strong, possibly even a record.<\/p>\n Rudiyansah, who hopes one day to work as a forest firefighter, urged crews to keep putting out the blazes: “To the volunteers and firefighters across Indonesia, keep your spirits up in the fight against the flames.”<\/em> That request comes from Superman.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In a landscape of burnt ground, a teenager works a fire hose… in a Superman costume. The young Indonesian, Rudiyansah, is helping put out forest fires that have…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":193,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[418],"tags":[546,547,507,543,545,548,544,550,551,549],"class_list":["post-194","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-borneo","tag-el-nino","tag-forest-fires","tag-indonesia","tag-palangkaraya","tag-peatlands","tag-rudiyansah","tag-superman","tag-volunteer-firefighters","tag-wildfires"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pentelikonews.gr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pentelikonews.gr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pentelikonews.gr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pentelikonews.gr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pentelikonews.gr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=194"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.pentelikonews.gr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":196,"href":"https:\/\/www.pentelikonews.gr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194\/revisions\/196"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pentelikonews.gr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pentelikonews.gr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=194"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pentelikonews.gr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=194"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pentelikonews.gr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=194"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Haze of smoke<\/h2>\n
The effects of El Ni\u00f1o<\/h2>\n