Fires Rage in Brazil
9/2/99
OVERVIEW & COMMENTARY by EE
The times they are a changing (ecologically in particular)...
g.b.
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RELAYED TEXT STARTS HERE:
Title: Fires rage in Brazil amid drought, land-clearing operations
Source: Associated Press
Status: Copyright 1999, contact source for permission to reprint
Date: September 2, 1999
RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil (AP) -- From the Amazon to the
Atlantic, in the mountains of Rio and the Pantanal wetlands,
Brazil is burning.
Months of little or no rain have left most of the country
tinder-dry, and fires -- often deliberately set -- are raging
out of control in forests and national parks across Latin
America's largest country.
Satellite images identified more than 31,000 fires in 15
states last month, according to Brazil's Environmental
Protection Agency, Ibama. Because the NOAA satellites can't
"see" through clouds or thick smoke, the total almost surely
was higher. And September looks even worse.
"Everything is at risk," Silvio Sa, of Ibama's Forest Fire
Prevention and Combat unit said on Thursday. "There appears to
be a lot more fires than last year."
August and September are the burning season in Brazil, when
farmers and ranchers set fire to brush to clear land for
planting or pasture.
As usual, the burning is worst along the southern rim of the
Amazon jungle, a three-state strip known as the "arc of
deforestation." What's different this year is the desert-like
dryness and wildfires have spread to southeastern Brazil.
"The humidity in Sao Paulo is under 20 percent. That's very
unusual," said Carlos Nobre, head of the Weather Forecasting
and Climate Studies division of Brazil's Space Research
Institute in Sao Jose dos Campos. "And there is no rain in
sight."
Nearly half the fires detected by satellites were in the huge
midwestern state of Mato Grosso, which contains both Amazon
rain forest and the Pantanal, the world's largest wetlands.
In the state capital of Cuiaba, 1,000 miles (1,600 kilometers)
northwest of Rio, temperatures this week hit 111 F (44 C).
Clouds of red dust mixed with smoke covered the city.
Hospitals reported a sharp increase in respiratory ailments.
Television footage showed schoolchildren wearing surgical
masks and a banner saying in Portuguese: "We Want to Breathe."
The rest of Brazil smoldered, too.
Near the mountain resort of Petropolis, near Rio, scores of
firefighters battled a blaze in the Serra dos Orgaos National
Park. By Wednesday the blaze had destroyed 175 acres (70
hectares) of parkland, including pristine tracts of Atlantic
forest.
In the southern state of Parana, fire ravaged more than
125,000 acres of the Ilha Grande National Park on its border
with Mato Grosso do Sul.
Ibama has coordinated firefighting efforts, shipping equipment
and enlisting the help of the army, navy and various police
forces. The U.S. government provided a plane equipped with
NASA-designed sensors and digital cameras, capable of mapping
the spread of fires through the smoke cover and relaying the
information to firefighters.