Buhr blog: History-Making Day at Dalat - Monday, October 5, by Hannah, Garth, and Eileen

Hannah's Write-up:

"No school today. It is a snow day!" I know that many of my friends long to hear these words occasionally, for without snow and other treacherous weather conditions we always have school in Canada. The beauty of a snow day is truly missed here in Malaysia, where it is always nice and sunny . . . well, almost always.

We do not have school today. The Head of School, Mr. Steinkamp, has cancelled this school day for everyone. The spontaneous day off was not caused by a bad storm nor was it caused by snow. Haze and smog has caused this day off.

Every year in Indonesia, the farmers burn their fields so that they can become fertile and fresh for another year of farming. Every year the smog floats over from Indonesia to poor Malaysia, where Malaysians groan and crank up their air conditioning. People are seen wearing masks. This year has been particularly bad. School in Singapore was canceled a few days ago, when it got past 200 on the smog index.

There is a rating system that everyone goes by. The local university measures the smog index. So every day, our Head of School checks the ratings. This weekend it got particularly bad. The rating was at 180. That high of a rating can cause health problems for healthy people. The smog is really sad, but it installs in me how important it is to have clear and clean air to breathe in.

So please pray for us in Southeast Asia. The haze may seem bad for us here but there are places in Indonesia where the haze has been at 700 for more than two weeks and in other parts of Malaysia it has been as high as 900. It is hazardous for a person's health to be exposed to unhealthy air. Please pray for rain and wind to clear away the haze.

We could not see the mountains that are nearby our house. Below is a picture of the mountains with our house in the foreground.

Eileen's View:

This was the first time ever in the history of Dalat that the doors of the school are closed due to air quality. It was contemplated in 2005 and again in 2013 when those were particularly bad seasons for haze, but the school doors stayed open then. There was pressure this week from the Malaysia Ministry of Education which did, in fact, call for all schools to be closed in Malaysia for 2 days (Dalat decided to go against that and only close for one day) especially as the public schools have no air conditioning or even sometimes windows. Air conditioning makes a huge difference in filtering the air. From what I've heard, the ironic thing is that while this burning is happening in Indonesia and the Indonesians are being blamed (and arrested), the land is actually owned by Malaysians and Singaporians.

Garth's View:

For the past few weeks they have been burning rain forests in Sumatra to make way for palm oil plantations. It has severely affected the air quality in Penang. It has become so bad that school is cancelled for this Monday.

Here are some pictures showing the air quality: