by Helicopters carrying buckets of water fly toward mountains where fires burn, thick fog periodically covers the sky and residents have been ordered to wear masks and limit driving due to poor air quality.
For a full week, firefighters have been battling fires in the mountains around Bogotá, Colombia’s capital, while dozens of other fires have burned across the country, in what authorities say is the hottest January in three decades. .
the president has declared national disaster and asked for international help to combat the fires, which, according to him, could spread beyond the Andes Mountains and break out on the Pacific coast and in the Amazon.
Colombia’s fires this month are unusual in a country where people are more accustomed to torrential rains and landslides than fire and ash. They have been attributed to high temperatures and drought exacerbated by the climate phenomenon known as El Niño.
Ricardo Lozano, a geologist and former Colombian Minister of the Environment, said that El Niño was a natural phenomenon that occurred cyclically, but that with climate change “these events are increasingly more intense and more extreme.”
This month brought record temperatures to Colombia, including 111 degrees Fahrenheit in Honda, a colonial town between the cities of Medellín and Bogotá. It has dried up forests, savannahs and normally wet highlands known as moors, turning parts of the country into a tinderbox.
As dozens of fires have burned, more than 100 square miles have burned, and as temperatures continue to rise, officials say more fires are likely before the rainy season begins in April.
Fires have also broken out in neighboring Venezuela and Ecuador, including in an ecological reserve.
Across Colombia, volunteer fire crews in many places say they are overwhelmed by fires fueled by heat and winds.
“One of the hardest things is finishing a shift and looking back at the mountains only to see more hot spots,” said Santiago Botello, risk management coordinator for Bogotá volunteer firefighters. The volunteers, he said, make up about a quarter of the roughly 600 firefighters who have been battling fires in the mountains above the city of nearly eight million people.
“It’s physically exhausting,” Botello said, adding: “It’s obviously not common to see something like that in Bogotá.”
Three fires in the mountains that run along one side of Bogotá, known as the Cerros Orientales, sent plumes of smoke over the city last week, grounding dozens of flights and prompting evacuations of some schools and buildings. .
The mayor, Carlos Fernando Galán, officially declared the Bogotá fires under control late on Sunday, although not completely extinguished, and on Monday new fires were reported both in the city and in Sopó, a town on its outskirts.
The helicopters continued to fly over Bogotá. Some were Black Hawk helicopters donated by the United States in 2022 and renamed by the government of Colombia as “Guacamayas” or macaws, signaling their new role in fighting fires, rather than just the decades-long war on drugs.
While helicopters transported water to hot spots, hiking trails that usually draw tourists with their lush forests, mountain streams and scenic views remained closed.
Eduardo Campos, biologist who runs a company that offers hiking in the mountainsHe said a carpet of leaves left by non-native species, including pines and eucalyptus, had dried out during El Niño and fueled the flames.
The damage was extensive, Campos said. Poor farmers living in the mountains had been displaced; animals had been cremated, including birds, mammals and small snakes; and swaths of the forest had been decimated.
“It will take years for the forest to be reestablished,” he said.
Susana Muhamad, Colombia’s environment minister, said on Friday that 95 percent of fires across the country had been started by people and not by natural causes such as lightning, either accidentally, while burning garbage or cleaning up land. land to cultivate, or with criminal intent. As of this week, 26 people had been arrested.
At least one person died in the fires, a 74-year-old man in La Capilla, a small town about 70 kilometers northeast of Bogotá. Authorities said his body had been found in his home after a fire was put out.
The fires have been particularly devastating for the moors, that house rare plants called frailejones and are essential for the supply of water to urban populations.
Hernán Morantes, an environmental lawyer and defender of the Páramo de Santurbán, a nature reserve 300 miles northeast of Bogotá, said there had been fires in the area before, “but never the magnitude of this one.”
The Colombian government asks people to report fires with the hashtag “El Niño is not a game.”
Seeking international assistance, including from the United Nations, President Gustavo Petro said this weekend: “The emergency due to global warming, combined with the El Niño phenomenon, has required action on several fronts. One has to do with heat waves and human health. Another with the forest fires. Another with the pressure on the water supply.”
Brazil, Canada and Peru have promised to send aid to Colombia, the government said.
Petro said countries in the region needed to prepare to address what could be “a planetary emergency in the Amazon rainforest.”
In recent years, fires in Brazil have consumed vast sections of the rainforest.
Petro has made fighting climate change a centerpiece of its agenda, including reducing deforestation and withdrawing the country from exporting fossil fuels. While some in Colombia have applauded the president’s emphasis on the link between this month’s fires and climate change, others have criticized him for not taking concrete steps to prepare.
Morantes, the attorney and advocate, said budget cuts to fire departments and a lack of planning had hampered the country’s ability to respond to fires, a claim echoed by officials previously involved in fire relief. disaster.
“We should have already had all the instruments of international cooperation ready, planes, everything,” he stated. “The problem is that the country is not prepared. “He’s clearly not ready.”
Responding to the claims, Colombia’s Environment Ministry said in a statement on Monday that it had been planning for El Niño for months, citing as an example the aerial response now underway.
The ministry said more than $2 billion had been allocated for fire preparedness and response and that a community network had been created for prevention and communication purposes.
“This situation is not a surprising spate of fires,” the statement said. “It is the El Niño phenomenon combined with the climate crisis that has caused extremely dry conditions. To this let us add the hand of man who, intentionally or accidentally, has caused the fires.”
Federico Rios contributed reports.
