The Cebu Haze Is Worse, and It Is Not Only Cebu Anymore
Metro Cebu peaked at an air quality index of 252 on 3 September, higher than the October 2015 haze, then fell back to 184 by late on 4 September. Still very unhealthy, and the fourth straight day there. Cebu City has extended its class suspension until further notice, and the smoke reaches from Bicol to Zamboanga.
Reported by Suroy Newsdesk · Edited by Janette Arceo · Editorial standards
Smoke from Indonesian forest fires pushed Metro Cebu’s air quality index to 252 on 3 September 2026, the worst reading Metro Cebu has recorded in this or any recent haze episode, and it has stayed in the very unhealthy band or worse for four straight days since. Separately, and for entirely different reasons, the Visayas and Mindanao grids have both been running short and on red alerts through the same week. Only one of these ends this week.
Updated 5 September 2026. The peak has passed and the episode has not. Metro Cebu topped out at an air quality index of 252 on 3 September, higher than the October 2015 haze, then fell back through 4 September to 184 by late afternoon. That is still the very unhealthy band, and it is the fourth straight day there. Cebu City has extended its class suspension until further notice rather than setting a return date. This was never only a Cebu story: Koronadal has touched the emergency band and readings run high from Bicol to Zamboanga. The sections below carry the current figures.
Two things are wrong with Cebu right now, and almost everyone is only talking about the one you can see.
The visible one is the haze. On 31 August 2026 the Environmental Management Bureau station in Talisay City, the only real time air quality monitor in the metro, read 117 on the air quality index. By 6 a.m. on 1 September it was 152. By noon it was 172, which EMB-7 classifies as very unhealthy. It held at 173 through three in the afternoon. It did not hold there. EMB-7 read 208 on the morning of 2 September and 215 that afternoon. By 3 September the metro opened at 241 at 4 a.m., hit 252 at 11 a.m. and was still at 251 by 4 p.m. That is the acutely unhealthy band, the purple tier, and it is higher than Metro Cebu recorded in the October 2015 haze.
Then it began to come down. On 4 September the same station read 202 at 7 a.m., 197 at 11 a.m. and 184 by 4 p.m. Falling, and still very unhealthy. Four consecutive days in that band or worse, and Arthur Niño Calupig of EMB 7 has said plainly that nobody can say when it lifts, because it depends on the Kalimantan fires and the wind rather than on anything decided here.
One number from the same day is worth more than the rest of them put together. The station at Cabitoonan in Toledo City, about fifty kilometers around the coast from the metro, read 73 on 4 September. Fair. Same province, same day, same smoke overhead, and a reading a traveller would not think twice about. Where the monitor stands is doing as much work here as the weather is.
There is a second gap worth naming, because it catches people out every day of an episode like this. The air can look worse on a morning when the index is falling. What the index measures is the mass of fine particles at one monitor. What a person sees from a window is light scattered across the whole depth of air between them and the horizon, and humidity makes those particles swell and scatter more without adding a microgram. A humid morning after rain can look thicker than a dry afternoon that is measurably dirtier. Trust the number for whether to wear a mask and keep a child indoors. Do not trust your eyes for it, in either direction.
The University of the Philippines station in Cebu recorded 152 on the same day, which is worth holding on to: readings vary by station, and the Talisay monitor is the one the local governments are acting on.The invisible one is the grid. On 2 September the Visayas ran on 2,205 megawatts of available capacity against a peak demand of 2,501, a shortfall of 296 megawatts, under a combination of red and yellow alerts. That is not a new development. It is the state the region has been in, on and off, since January.
The 3 September position is worse. The National Grid Corporation of the Philippines put the Visayas grid on red alert from 1 p.m. to 10 p.m., with yellow alerts from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. and again from 10 p.m. to 11 p.m., on 2,187 megawatts of available capacity against a projected peak demand of 2,575. That is a 388 megawatt gap and the largest of this episode. Therma Visayas Unit 1 and Panay Energy Development Corporation Unit 3 are among the plants offline or running derated, with roughly 792 megawatts unavailable across the grid. A red alert means capacity cannot cover demand plus the required contingency reserve, which is the condition under which rotational outages actually get scheduled.
On 4 September the Visayas is short again, by less: red alert from 3 p.m. to 10 p.m. with yellow either side, 2,233 megawatts available against a projected peak of 2,504, a gap of 271. The reason it is not better than that is structural rather than daily. Thirty two units are on forced outage and seventeen more are running derated, 815.8 megawatts of capacity that exists on paper and is not there. Kepco-SPC at Naga put 103 megawatts back on 1 September and the grid still could not cover the afternoon.
Mindanao is on alerts the same day and for the same reason, red from 1 p.m. to 9 p.m., 2,549 megawatts against a 2,592 peak. That is a 43 megawatt gap, which is thin rather than dramatic, but it lands on the region already taking the worst of the smoke. Imports from Mindanao into the Visayas have been constrained through this stretch, which is part of why the Visayas cannot borrow its way out.
They are unrelated, and the timeline proves it. The haze arrived at the end of August. The power plants at the center of the shortage have been broken since May, and some of the units counted in the current outage list have been offline since 2021.
Both, however, land on the same week and on the same people, and one of them makes the other worse.
Part one: the air
The smoke is Kalimantan’s. Forest fires burning in Indonesia, somewhere between roughly 1,200 and 1,800 kilometers to the southwest depending on which part of the island is alight, are producing fine particulate matter, and the southwest monsoon that Filipinos call the habagat is carrying it north.
Arthur Niño Calupig, air quality monitoring specialist at DENR-EMB 7, put the mechanism plainly on 1 September: “As long as the forest fires continue and the prevailing habagat winds persist, the poor air quality could possibly extend over the coming days.”
Gerry Bagtasa of the UP Diliman Institute of Environmental Science and Meteorology added the timing. Tropical cyclones sitting to the north have been strengthening the monsoon flow, effectively pulling Indonesian smoke across the archipelago faster and further than it normally travels. His read, given 2 September: this is not a local emissions problem, because local emissions do not behave this way when the wind is strong.
What the numbers mean
The index compresses several pollutants into one figure, but the one doing the damage is PM2.5: particles small enough to pass the nose and throat and reach deep lung tissue. Above 100 is where the health advisories begin.
One caveat worth stating rather than hiding. Outlets covering the same readings this week have attached different band names to them, because the Philippine index does not use identical thresholds to the American one most air quality apps default to. The numbers are consistent across coverage. The adjectives are not. Read the figure, not the label.
Three forecasts, and they do not agree
| Source | Date given | When it clears |
|---|---|---|
| Environmental Management Bureau | 1 September 2026 | Parts of the Philippines affected until 3 September |
| Jundy del Socorro, DENR-EMB chief | 2 September 2026 | Improvement between 4 and 6 September, if rain continues and winds shift |
| Gerry Bagtasa, UP IESM | 2 September 2026 | Friday or Saturday, 4 or 5 September |
The spread is three days and the reason for it is honest rather than sloppy. Del Socorro said the situation is “largely beyond our control because it depends on several factors outside the Philippines.” Two of the three variables sit in Indonesia: whether the fires keep burning, and what the wind does. The third, rain over the Visayas, is the one that would settle it fastest, because rainfall scrubs particulates out of the air far faster than time does.
Anyone planning around a single date is planning around the most optimistic of three.
What the Department of Health is asking for
The DOH advisory issued 2 September covers Central Luzon, Calabarzon, Mimaropa and the Visayas, naming Cebu and Bohol.
Stay indoors where possible. Outdoors, wear an N95. Where an N95 is not available, the department suggests a wet cloth over the nose and mouth, or two surgical masks layered, while being clear that neither is equivalent. EMB has been blunter about why: cloth and surgical masks do not filter PM2.5, so a mask that feels like protection may not be providing any.
Extra caution for children, the elderly, and anyone with respiratory or heart conditions. Watch for difficulty breathing, coughing, chest pain, watering eyes and nasal itchiness. Asthma gets worse in this air.
Indoors, keep windows and doors closed and run air conditioning on recirculate rather than drawing in outside air.
Which brings us to the other problem.
Two people are worth quoting on where this goes next. Arthur Niño Calupig, air quality monitoring specialist at EMB 7, said the bureau is “already preparing for the worst-case scenario if the Air Quality Index rises to the Emergency category”, and that how long this lasts depends on the Kalimantan fires and the wind rather than on anything decided here. Jeanette Pauline Cortes, medical officer at DOH 7, has told hospitals to prepare for a surge in respiratory cases, and asked people to use N95 masks rather than the wet cloth that circulates as advice every time this happens.
Where else the haze has reached
Cebu is the loudest case and it is not the worst one. The same smoke has been measured across Mindanao and up into Luzon, and in one city it has already crossed into the band above Cebu’s.
| Place | Reading | Band | When |
|---|---|---|---|
| Koronadal City, South Cotabato | 312.8 | Emergency | 6 p.m., 1 September |
| Metro Cebu | 252 | Acutely unhealthy | 11 a.m., 3 September |
| Iligan City | 209 | Acutely unhealthy | 1 September |
| Iligan City | 203 | Acutely unhealthy | 31 August |
| Zamboanga City, Barangay Talisayan | 159 | Very unhealthy | early September |
| Cagayan de Oro | 105 | Unhealthy for sensitive groups | 1 September |
| Zamboanga City, Barangay Tumaga | 48 | Good | early September |
| Cabitoonan, Toledo City, Cebu | 73 | Fair | 4 September |
The two Zamboanga rows are in the table on purpose. Talisayan and Tumaga are barangays in the same city and they were reading 159 and 48. A city-level number is close to meaningless in this episode, and a reading taken three kilometers from where you are standing is not your air.
By region, the DENR has put Bicol and the Zamboanga Peninsula in the very unhealthy band and Central Luzon and Northern Mindanao in the acutely unhealthy one. The Department of Health has issued its own guidance keyed to the six bands, from good and fair up to emergency, at which point the instruction is to stay indoors with the doors and windows shut. It asks everyone else to wear masks and cut strenuous outdoor activity, tells outdoor workers to take regular breaks indoors, and singles out children, older people, pregnant women and anyone with a heart or lung condition to keep their prescribed medicines to hand.
One thing worth separating out, because the two are being reported in the same breath. Metro Manila closed schools on 4 September, and so did Tarlac, Atok in Benguet and nine towns in Pampanga, but that is the habagat and the flooding that came with it, not the haze. DENR readings for Metro Manila stations including Las Piñas and Malabon were fair to good on 3 September. The capital has had bad air this week. It is not having Cebu’s week.
Part two: the power
The official advice for a haze day is to stay inside with the windows shut and the air conditioning running. In Metro Cebu this week, that advice collides with a rotating one hour power cut.
Nobody in an agency has said this out loud, and it is the most practical thing about the whole situation.
What the grid is actually short of
On 2 September 2026 the Visayas grid had 2,205 megawatts available against a peak demand of 2,501. Roughly 774 megawatts of capacity was unavailable outright, with individual units carrying outage start dates ranging from 2021 to this month, and a further sixteen plants were running at reduced capacity. NGCP issued both red and yellow alerts for the day. A red alert means supply cannot meet demand plus the grid’s regulating requirement. A yellow alert means the operating margin cannot cover a contingency.
The region has now spent more than seventy consecutive days on one alert or the other.
The single largest hole is Therma Visayas in Toledo City, whose two units total 338 megawatts and which went down in May with main turbine failures. Unit 2, 169 megawatts, came back to full load on 1 September. Unit 1 is still out for boiler tube repairs. KEPCO-SPC in Naga City restored 103 megawatts on the same day. Metro Cebu alone draws over 1,000 megawatts.
What has been holding the region up is imported electricity: 400 to 450 megawatts across the Mindanao-Visayas interconnection and around 250 megawatts from Luzon. Energy Undersecretary Mario Marasigan was direct about the arithmetic, saying that without those continuous transfers the Visayas would face consistent red alert conditions.
When it ends
NGCP and the Department of Energy are targeting 11 September 2026 for a return to normal supply, which depends on Therma Visayas Unit 1 coming back. That target has already moved once, from the end of August.
Note the gap. The haze clears this weekend. The power does not, for another nine days after that.
What a brownout actually looks like here
Visayan Electric implements one hour rotational brownouts in selected areas when demand is high and NGCP instructs it to, which in practice has meant the evening peak. Its franchise area covers Cebu City, Mandaue, Talisay and Naga, plus Minglanilla, Consolacion, Liloan and San Fernando.
The pattern is not fixed. On 31 August the red alert ran from 5 to 10 p.m. with a yellow alert following until 11 p.m., but parts of Mactan lost power between 10 a.m. and 5 p.m. the same day. Planning around the evening only is a mistake.
The part that catches people out: the water
When the power goes, the pumps go.
Rotational brownouts take Metropolitan Cebu Water District pumping stations offline, and the taps go with them. MCWD general manager John DX Lapid described the result plainly: “It’s either low water pressure or there’s no water at all,” with severity depending on which facilities lose power.
He also named the operational problem behind it. MCWD typically gets only one to two hours of advance notice about where the outages will fall, which is not enough time to prepare a distribution network. The district posts affected barangays on its official Facebook page as it learns them, and that page, rather than any schedule published in advance, is the practical way to know.
On 14 August, a red alert between 6 and 9 p.m. forced rotational cuts that took pumping stations down across the metro. That is the shape of it.
What is not happening, which matters more than it sounds
A short list, because the absence of these is what separates a difficult week from a cancelled trip.
- Cebu City has now extended its class suspension until further notice. Executive Order No. 106, Series of 2026, signed by Acting Mayor Tomas Osmeña, carries the suspension of face to face classes in all public and private schools through 5 September and beyond, and covers examinations and school activities as well as ordinary teaching. That open ended wording matters more than the closure itself: the city has stopped naming a return date. Lapu-Lapu suspended all levels including teaching and non teaching personnel, Talisay suspended public schools and left private schools and Talisay City College to decide for themselves, and Carcar, Minglanilla and San Fernando are also off. Cebu City had hoped to resume on 4 September when it first called classes on 2 September. It did not.
- No flight disruption has been reported at Mactan-Cebu International Airport from either the haze or the grid.
- No travel advisory, entry restriction or activity ban is in force for Cebu or Bohol.
- The brownouts are rotational and roughly an hour, not sustained outages.
- The Cebu provincial government has issued health guidance, not movement restrictions. Governor Pamela Baricuatro has asked residents, and vulnerable groups in particular, to wear masks, with the provincial disaster office monitoring. The Department of Health in Central Visayas advises limiting time outdoors and wearing N95 or KN95 rather than cloth or surgical.
Checked 5 September 2026.
What it changes about a trip this week
The constraints are air and electricity, not access. That distinction does most of the work.
Largely unaffected. Anything underwater or under cover. Diving and snorkelling off Moalboal, the Kawasan canyoneering run, the sardine run, churches, markets, restaurants, Carbon, the Basilica. The particulate load is in the air column and a mask is irrelevant twelve feet under. Resorts on the south and west coasts sit outside the Visayan Electric franchise area and many run their own generators anyway.
Degraded by the haze. Anything whose payoff is a long sightline. Osmeña Peak, Tops, the sea of clouds at Mt. Campetra, the ridge views along the Transcentral Highway. Haze scatters light and collapses contrast with distance, so far ridges go milky and gray while the foreground stays sharp. A viewpoint is worth what you can see from it, and this week that is less.
Complicated by the grid. Hotel lifts, air conditioning, hot water, hotel wifi, ATMs, card terminals in smaller shops, and the phone you are navigating with. None of it stops for long. All of it stops without much warning.
Worth rescheduling rather than cancelling. Sunrise hikes, drone work and island hopping, which combine hours of outdoor exertion with a view as the reason for going. The exertion is the health question and the view is the value question. When both point the same way, move the day to the back half of the week.
One upside, stated without enthusiasm. Particulates redden sunrises and sunsets, and the light at either end of the day this week is unusually warm and heavy. Poor compensation for a lost mountain view, but photographers should know it is there.
If the trip is already booked
Nothing here justifies cancelling a Cebu trip, and nothing here should be treated as trivial by anyone travelling with asthma or a small child.
- Bring N95 masks from home. Local supply tightens fast during an advisory week.
- Ask the hotel two specific questions before arrival. Whether it has a generator, and whether that generator covers the guest floors or only the lobby and the lifts. The second answer is the one that matters at 8 p.m.
- Fill a bottle and a bucket in the afternoon. If the pumps go down, the tap goes with them, and the hotel’s roof tank is finite.
- Charge everything during the day. Phone, camera batteries, power bank.
- Carry cash. Card terminals and ATMs go down with everything else.
- Follow MCWD’s Facebook page if you are staying in Metro Cebu. It is the only place the affected barangays get named, and usually only an hour or two ahead.
- Check the EMB reading the morning of any planned hike, not the night before. The index has moved 50 points inside a single day.
And watch for rain. It is the fastest thing that can end the haze, and it is the one variable in that forecast actually sitting over the Philippines. It will do nothing at all for the grid.
For what to do when the air turns bad for a different reason, see our volcanic ashfall survival guide.
Air quality figures from Environmental Management Bureau monitoring stations at Talisay City and UP Cebu, 31 August to 2 September 2026. Grid figures from National Grid Corporation of the Philippines alert bulletins, 2 September 2026. Plant status and supply projections as reported by the Department of Energy, 1 and 2 September 2026. Water service accounts from the Metropolitan Cebu Water District. Advisories as issued by DENR-EMB and the Department of Health, 1 and 2 September 2026. Conditions in this report change daily and this page is dated accordingly.
Last checked: 2 September 2026.
