Another day, another disaster

A sea crash was blamed on the Asian smog yesterday.

The choking smog covering south-east Asia appeared to have claimed more lives yesterday, when two cargo ships collided 250 miles from the spot where a passenger airliner crashed a few hours before.

Twenty-nine crewmen of the Indian-registered Vikraman were still missing last night, 24 hours after it collided with a supertanker, broke in two and partially sank in the Straits of Malacca, between Malaysia and Indonesia. The cause was unclear, but a spokesman for the Malaysian Maritime Rescue and Co-ordination Centre blamed the thick smoke that has enveloped the region for two months.

The so-called "haze" also appears to have contributed to the crash of a Garuda Airlines Airbus, which flew into a hill plantation on Sumatra on Friday,killing everyone on board.

Minutes earlier, the pilot compained of poor visibility as he was coming in to land at Medan. "He was reluctant to go, and said the haze had become more serious," his wife said. "But he went, and now he will never return."

Like many airports in the region, Medan has been intermittently closed this summer due to poor visibility caused by the smog. The Indonesian transport minister refused to speculate on whether the haze was to blame, but an official of Garuda said the haze "played an important role".

All 234 passengers and crew died in the crash, including two Britons. There were also Italians, Japanese, Americans, Germans and a Belgian aboard. Most bodies appeared to have been recovered yesterday, but the search was hampered by the remoteness of the crash site and the mutilated condition of the dead.

The two transport disasters add to the lengthening list of catastrophes associated with the smog, bringing further chaos to a region already in economic and financial difficulties. Apart from the danger of accidents, the pollution has made hundreds of thousands of people ill across six countries, with unknown long-term risks of cancer and chronic respiratory disease. Disruption caused by the smog is threatening jobs and profits in industries as varied as fishing and tourism, in countries which have seen the value of their currencies tumble in the past three months.

The immediate source of the smoke is great fires burning out of control in the tropical forests of Sumatra and Borneo, two of the biggest islands in the world. Some have begun spontaneously or by accident, but many are started deliberately by small subsistence farmers to clear land, and by big international forestry and plantation companies.

The practice of "slash and burn" is centuries old, but this year the fires have spread and lingered as a result of an Asia-wide drought which is blighting harvests as far apart as Borneo and North Korea. The drought, caused by the climatic phenomenon known as El Nino, has killed hundreds of tribal people in remote areas of New Guinea: not only have their crops failed, the smog prevents relief planes from landing or accurately targeting dropped supplies.

Indonesia has acknowledged two deaths due to smog-related disease, though the number is surely higher. President Suharto last week declared the smog a national disaster. In Sarawak, in the Malaysian portion of Borneo, a state of emergency was declared as the Air Pollutant Index reached a record of 839, more than 700 points above the level considered unhealthy. Over 10,000 people there had visited hospital.

All over the region motorists drive with headlights on through a crepuscular gloom, but the pervasive smell of smoke lingers even indoors. Apart from short-term ailments such as asthma, bronchitis and conjunctivitis, toxic gases could be laying the foundations for deadly illness years in the future. Cigarettes may turn out to be trivial compared to exposure to smog, which pervades the respiratory system 24 hours a day. "Cancer known to be caused by this haze will occur in 10 to 20 years," said Hisashi Ogawa, of the World Health Organisation. "We've never had such an experience in any other part of the world covering such a large area. Normally, bush fires affect rural areas with small populations."

But even those not exposed to the pollution will be affected by its economic consequences. Enterprises of all kinds are being disrupted by cancelled flights, slowed traffic and choking employees. In the Philippines, fishermen were forced to remain in harbour. Foreign embassies and companies have started flying their employees and families out for breather breaks. The effect on tourism will be devastating - last week Thomas Cook announced a freeze on all holidays to the area.

In its geographical spread and knock-on effects, the haze is an eerie correlative for the currency crisis which spread through the region. Even if the mysterious workings of El Nino have exacerbated the situation, the smoke is a man-made disaster which the region's governments have been unable to prevent. Britain yesterday announced $100,000 (pounds 62,500) in aid to combat the smog.

Last week, Lim Kit Siang, Malaysia's opposition leader, made the analogy explicit. "Malaysia has achieved another impossibility - the Air Pollution Index overshooting the 800 mark while the Kuala Lumpur Stock Exchange Composite Index falls below 800," he said. "It is a measure of the very troubled state Malaysia has found herself in the past two months."

World food crisis, page 18