Boosted by the 1997/98 El Niño event wildfires have destroyed huge areas of rainforest and bushland in South America and SE Asia. Thick haze covered large areas for months. Due to their cloud and haze penetrating capability SAR sensors can supplement existing fire monitoring systems based on NOAA hot spot data by providing a 900 times higher spatial resolution. This paper describes first results obtained with multitemporal ERS-2 SAR images acquired during the peak of the 1998 wildfires in Indonesia. Burnt areas detected by ERS were verified using NOAA hot spot data and extensive field surveys