Brazil continues to fight fires

Brazil was still battling tens of thousands of wildfires Friday night fueled by the worst drought on record ;e in the country, where major cities such as Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro are threatened.

“The federal government, in cooperation with state and municipal governments, is working to combat the fires,” President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva wrote on the Bluesky social network, a fallback since X was banned in Brazil.

The number of fires increased in the first 12 days of September this year compared to the entire month of September 2023, with 49,266 fires compared to 46,486, according to figures from the National Institute of Space Investigations based on data collected by satellites.

A fire burns in the Tingua Biological Reserve in Nova Iguacu, Rio de Janeiro state, Brazil, on September 13, 2024 © AFP – Pablo PORCIUNCULA

As of midnight on Thursday, 60.7% of the fires recorded in September in South America were burning in Brazil, according to the same source.

Many outbreaks are in key natural areas for biodiversity such as the Amazon, the Cerrado and the Pantanal.

The fires have also reached cities, including Sao Paulo, which saw the fires approach its northern districts on Friday. A police helicopter was trying to put out a forest fire near the Brasilandia favela, AFP reported.

In less than two weeks in September, Brazil emitted four megatons (four million tons) of carbon dioxide, Mark Parrington of the European Copernicus Observatory told AFP.

Forest fires in South America © AFP – Guillermo RIVAS PACHECO, Jean-Michel CORNU

Worldwide, the fires have generated between ten and 15 megatons of CO2 in total, he added.

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“We are reaching the peak of the fire season,” according to the specialist.

– Crime and agriculture –

Authorities have said that the majority of these fires, some of which have spilled over into Uruguay and Argentina, are of criminal origin or linked to agricultural activity.

Smoke from forest fires in Sao Paulo, Brazil, on September 13, 2024 © AFP – Nelson ALMEIDA

President Lula has called on the population to denounce those responsible, with the government announcing tougher sanctions on Wednesday.

These tens of thousands of outbreaks are spreading all the more easily as Brazil is going through its worst drought since records began. Experts attribute this extreme situation in particular to climate change.

The National Institute of Meteorology has placed on “danger” alert regions in the southeast, where Sao Paulo and Rio are located, as well as in the center of the country, which is experiencing particularly low humidity levels of between 12 and 20%.

“When night falls, the ground is no longer humid, the temperature drops just a little,” Sao Paulo Civil Defense spokesman Captain Roberto Farina told Folha newspaper.

“It seems like the fire is going out, but the embers continue to burn imperceptibly. The next day, it is hot and the embers flare up again,” he added.

In Mangaratiba, near Rio, visibility is reduced by smoke from the fires that have been burning for two days in the surrounding mountains.

A firefighter fights a fire in Sao Carlos, Sao Paulo state, Brazil, on September 11, 2024 © STR – Lourival Izaque

“We see on television that they talk about it (the fires) in the Amazon, but we know that it is the case all over Brazil,” Gilberto de Oliveira Santos, a resident of 79, told AFP years.

“We feel it in the air, it's visual, the smoke, the darkness and it causes problems in the nostrils,” he continued.

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