Jakarta. The worst forest fires in living memory continue to generate huge amounts of health-threatening smoke throughout Indonesia, with winds spreading the haze to areas previously untouched by the problem.

The national weather agency, or BMKG, reported on Sunday that three-quarters of Indonesian territory was affected to varying degrees by the haze, including the capital Jakarta, with fires burning out of control across hundreds of thousands of hectares of forest in Sumatra and Kalimantan – the heartland of Indonesia’s palm oil industry – as well as in the relatively untouched forests of Sulawesi and Papua, where the government has massive ambitions of clearing more space for farmland.

The only areas not affected by the haze as of Sunday, according to the BMKG, were Yogyakarta, Central Java, parts of East Java, East Nusa Tenggara and the northern part of Papua.

Sumatra

The island of Sumatra continues to be the hardest hit by the fires there, particularly in the province of Riau, where oil palm planters are accused of slash-and-burn clearing of ostensibly protected peat forests.

The haze there has spread north, as far as Aceh province, and affected flights at Kualanamu airport outside Medan, North Sumatra.

Thirty flights were cancelled on Sunday as a result of poor visibility caused by the haze, and as of Monday morning airport authorities had still not permitted any flights to take off or land there. Schools in Medan have been ordered closed until at least Thursday.

In Aceh, flights have also been cancelled to and from Banda Aceh’s Sultan Iskandar Muda airport, with visibility through the weekend and Monday no higher than 800 meters. Airport authorities say they require visibility of at least 2,000 meters to ensure flight safety.

The haze has also forced residents of Banda Aceh and Aceh Besar district to remain indoors much of the time. Air pollution indexes in both regions have remained at unsafe levels all weekend.

In Jambi, another province devastated by forest fires, the index is now in hazardous territory, having already been declared unsafe more than three months ago. Local authorities said the index “improved” on Monday to around 400 – down from an apocalyptic 600 over the weekend. The “safe” range is 0 to 50; anything over 200 is considered “very unhealthy,” and over 300 “hazardous.” Visibility there is down to just 200 meters, and schools remain closed as of Monday.

In Bengkulu province, south of Riau, visibility was down to a myopic 10 meters on Monday morning in two districts and 50 meters in a third, while in seven of the remaining districts it was at 200 meters. Local authorities have advised residents not to go outdoors unless absolutely necessary.

Kalimantan

The haze continues to choke large areas of Kalimantan, with officials warning there is little prospect of quelling the forest fires before the expected start of rains in late November.

Some 43 million people have been affected by haze in Sumatra and Kalimantan alone, according to the BMKG, and on Saturday the Navy sent a frigate to evacuate residents from hard-hit areas around Banjarmasin, South Kalimantan.

In Pontianak, West Kalimantan, long-suffering residents received a temporary respite from the haze when rains fell briefly last Thursday and Friday, but by the weekend the haze was back in force. The air quality in the city on Monday morning was “very unhealthy” at more than 260.

Sulawesi/Maluku

On the island of Sulawesi, until recently relatively untouched by industrial-scale plantations, fires set to clear forests for farmland have destroyed vast tracts of forest and generated more haze.

Flights were cancelled or postponed throughout the weekend to and from Sam Ratulangi airport in Manado, North Sulawesi. Fires in the province have razed more than 18,000 hectares of forest and counting, officials say.

In Makassar, South Sulawesi, more than 40 flights were delayed or cancelled on Sunday at Sultan Hasanuddin airport because of the haze. The province accounted for 151 of the 800 fire hot spots detected by satellite across Sulawesi over the weekend.

In North Maluku, part of the famed “Spice Islands” archipelago, the military is helping fight forest fires that have flared up there. Officials said they had managed to put out two major blazes there on North Halmahera Island over the weekend, but continue to battle an undisclosed number of other fires spread across the region. There were more than 40 hot spots detected across North Maluku over the weekend.

Papua

The Papua region, Indonesia’s half of the island of New Guinea, is home to the largest unspoiled tract of forest in the country, but fires there are threatening to turn it into another victim of the oil palm monoculture curse.

Residents and soldiers worked throughout the weekend to put out a blaze burning since last week in the heavily forest foothills just outside Jayapura, the Papua provincial capital.

In the southern Mappi district, haze from forest fires there forced the closure of the local Air Force base for a fifth straight day on Saturday. The haze eased slightly by Sunday to allow the resumption of military flights.

Jakarta

In the nation’s capital, residents awoke to a thin cloak of haze shrouding the Jakarta skyline. Sutopo Purwo Nugroho, a spokesman for the National Disaster Mitigation Agency (BNPB), said the haze was only temporary and would soon dissipate with the wind. He added the air quality was as good as could be expected for Jakarta, and that the particles in the haze posed much less of a health risk than the daily dose of exhaust fumes from the vehicles clogging the city’s streets.