By late afternoon on Thursday, the centre of Singapore was still sitting in air the National Environment Agency calls unhealthy. The 24-hour Pollutant Standards Index in the central region was 104 at 6pm. It had crossed the line at about 11pm on Wednesday and stayed there through the working day. North, east, south and west of the island remained in the moderate band. The skyline from Caldecott looked the way haze always looks when it arrives from the south: not night, not rain, just a city with the distance taken out of it.e7b82a
Asiaone
A friend of 35 years ( Nature Lover) who knows the city air conditions personally, had these words first-hand when asked about it.
“Daar was seriously bad dae, veral die neighboring countries, Malaysia, veldbrande, landerye gebrand… terrible conditions.”
“The days were seriously bad, especially in neighbouring countries like Malaysia — bush fires, farmland on fire… terrible conditions.”
That is the sentence as it was said. Fields on fire. Neighbouring country in smoke. Conditions that do not need a bigger adjective than the one he used.
NEA’s explanation has not changed for days. Moderate to dense smoke plumes are still being picked up over fires in southern Sumatra and Kalimantan. Some of that smoke from southern Sumatra has been watched drifting toward Singapore on the prevailing southerly and south-easterly winds. Dry weather is expected to hold over those fire grounds. If the fires hold with them, the agency says the risk of transboundary haze does not go away. The forecast for the island is high-moderate to low-unhealthy. That is a careful sentence. It means the centre may stay where it is, or ease a little, and that nobody in the briefing room is promising a clean weekend. Asiaone
This is not the first unhealthy reading of the episode. On 4 September the central PSI reached 123 — the highest mark so far in this run. Then the numbers eased. Then they came back. Anyone who has lived a September in Singapore knows the pattern: a clear morning, a yellow afternoon, an evening when the Marina towers lose their edges. The showers that passed over the west of the island on Thursday morning, with flash-flood alerts in Jurong West, did not wash the haze out of the centre. Rain here is local. The smoke is regional.Tempo
The science is older than this week. Fires in Sumatra and Kalimantan send fine particles across the Strait when the wind is right. Singapore measures that load as PSI and as one-hour PM2.5. By 6pm on Thursday the one-hour PM2.5 readings in the centre had been elevated since 2pm; the other four regions were back in the normal band. That split matters. It is why a person in the central region can feel a different day from a person in the east, on the same island, under the same flag. Asiaone
None of this requires a louder word than the numbers already carry. Unhealthy, on the NEA scale, is 101 to 200. It is advice to reduce prolonged outdoor exertion, especially for the young, the old, and anyone with heart or lung illness. It is not a lockdown and it is not a mystery. The fires are visible on the maps the agency cites. The wind is the same wind that has carried this story across the Malacca Strait for decades. What is current is only the reading: 104 in the centre at 6pm, still unhealthy, still forecast to linger in that high-moderate to low-unhealthy range.
For a reader opening this from Singapore, that is the news. The rest of the week in the city — Parliament on ministerial pay, the STI easing as oil went back through US$100, a submarine cable announced with Thailand — can wait its own pages. The air is the thing you walk through before you read any of it. It was unhealthy in the centre last night. It was still unhealthy this evening. The fires to the south are still burning.
