The Malaysian media today said the country was running out of patience over Indonesia's inability to control forest fires which have sent air pollution levels soaring to extremely hazardous levels.

"Malaysians are a tolerant lot. But there is a limit to even this legendary patience when the consequences for health, the economy and quality of life are grave," said a comment piece in the New Straits Times .

The article noted that Indonesia had still not ratified an Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) agreement on controlling haze which was proposed after the last crisis in 1997 and 1998 which enveloped parts of the region for months.

"Perhaps as frustrating as the muggy feeling is the sense of helplessness many Malaysians feel over the source of the haze... and the denial and cavalier attitude of some Indonesians toward the suffering here," it said.

A commentary in The Star newspaper also highlighted the frustration of Malaysians who were forced to suffer through the crisis, and urged the government to treat the situation as a national disaster.

It said that many Malaysians living in the central Klang Valley which the capital Kuala Lumpur is situated in felt "depressed and trapped".

"Depressed because they and their families have been inhaling foul air for the past two weeks; trapped because there is no escaping the haze," said its author.

The article said that many families were deserting the capital, where air pollution levels are officially unhealthy, for Malacca or Singapore in the south or the northern Malaysian island of Penang.

"Let's be frank: what we have on our hands is an environmental disaster on a scale that Malaysians have never experienced before," it added.

Just talks

Malaysia declared a state of emergency Thursday in two towns on the west coast which have borne the brunt of the haze rolling in from Indonesia's Sumatra island which is separated from peninsular Malaysia by the narrow Malacca Straits.

Websites and blogs were also dominated by discussion of the haze.

"It is time that Indonesia should think about compensating the Malaysian people for the misery that we have to go through because of their folly," said one letter on the popular malaysiakini site.

"It is time that people in the affected countries stand up and demand their right to good quality air," it said. "Talk of reducing harm to Asean neighbours has remained just that - talk."