Brazil was still battling tens of thousands of wildfires Friday night fueled by the country’s worst drought on record, with major cities including Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro under threat.
“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 solution since X was banned in Brazil.
There were more fires in the first 12 days of September this year than in the entire month of September 2023, with 49,266 fires compared to 46,486, according to figures from the National Institute for Space Investigations based on data collected by satellites.
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 of the outbreaks are in key natural areas for biodiversity such as the Amazon, the Cerrado and the Pantanal.
The fires also reached cities, including Sao Paulo, which saw the fires approach its northern neighborhoods 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.
Worldwide, the fires have generated between ten and 15 megatons of CO2 in total, he added.
“We are reaching the peak of the fire season,” according to the specialist.
Crime and agriculture
Authorities said the majority of the fires, some of which have spread to Uruguay and Argentina, were caused by arson or agricultural activity.
President Lula 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 period of drought since records began. Experts attribute this extreme situation in particular to climate change.
The National Institute of Meteorology has placed on “danger” alert the regions of the Southeast, where Sao Paulo and Rio are located, but also the center of the country, which is experiencing particularly low humidity levels, between 12 and 20%.
“When night falls, the ground is no longer humid, the temperature just drops 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 ignite again,” he added.
In Mangaratiba, near Rio, visibility is reduced by smoke from fires that have been burning for two days in the surrounding mountains.
“We see on television that they are talking about it [des incendies] “It’s not in the Amazon, but we know it’s the case all over Brazil,” Gilberto de Oliveira Santos, a 79-year-old resident, told AFP.
“We feel it in the air, it’s visual, the smoke, the darkness and it causes problems in the nostrils,” he continued.