Brazil at war against fires southeast of Sao Paulo

Ribeirao Preto. Brazil is waging a “war against fire and crime,” Environment Minister Marina Silva said Sunday amid forest fires ravaging the southeastern state of Sao Paulo, leaving more than 40 cities on high alert.

At the end of a meeting with President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the minister announced that the Federal Police had opened investigations to determine the causes of the fire that has caused various damages in the region in recent days.

“So far we have not detected any fires caused by lightning, which means that there are people starting fires,” Lula said in a statement, promising federal assistance to states in fighting the fires.

Sao Paulo Governor Tarcisio de Freitas, who declared a state of emergency in 45 municipalities on Saturday, said Sunday that two people suspected of starting criminal arson attacks had been arrested.

The situation is particularly worrying in Ribeirao Preto, a city of more than 700,000 inhabitants located about 300 kilometres from Sao Paulo, in the heart of an important agricultural sector.

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“I managed to look out onto the street last night at around 7:00 p.m. and I felt very short of breath, it scared me a lot. I’ve lived here for 32 years and I’ve never seen anything like it,” said Carlos Rodrigues, a 66-year-old retiree.

“It’s horrible. I suffer from allergic rhinitis, I had to lock myself in my house because of the smoke,” said beautician Nazaré Loureiro dos Santos, 71, sheltering under an umbrella.

Authorities hope that the rains that fell on Sunday will help alleviate the situation.

Apocalyptic

Residents of a private neighborhood in Ribeirao Preto had to evacuate their homes due to the proximity of the flames, according to the G1 news portal.

Several videos circulating on social media showed Ribeirao Preto plunged into darkness on Saturday from late afternoon, with a thick layer of smoke and strong gusts of wind.

“It’s apocalyptic. Lots of wind, lots of smoke, you can’t see the city anymore, and it’s 5:00 p.m.,” says the author of one of the videos as he leaves his house, wearing a protective mask and squinting at the smoke.

Two factory workers died on Friday in Urupes, in the north of the state, while fighting a fire.

The blazes also forced the cancellation of flights, closed roads, killed livestock and destroyed crops.

According to the Antonio do Aracanguá mayor’s office, about forty heads of cattle were burned to death on a farm.

An Embraer KC-390 aircraft, originally designed for troop transport but converted into a water bomber with a capacity of 12,000 liters, arrived in Ribeirao Preto early Sunday morning.

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Clouds of smoke could be seen in several cities in other regions of Brazil on Sunday, including the capital Brasilia in the center-west of the country.

According to data collected by satellites from the National Institute for Space Research (Inpe), the state of Sao Paulo is experiencing its worst August in terms of fires since records began in 1998, with 3,480 identified outbreaks. That is more than double last year’s total.

The government linked this situation to climate change.

“Even climate deniers can no longer continue to deny the climate crisis. We have to fight climate change with a lot of intelligence, investment, and financing from the richest countries that have already destroyed their forests,” Lula said on Sunday in X.

“This bill cannot be paid by the Global South alone,” he added.

The spread of the fires is favoured by a prolonged period of drought, in the state of Sao Paulo, but also in the Amazon (north), where forest fires are ravaging land.

“If we had not reduced deforestation by half (in 2023 compared to 2022), the situation would have been much worse,” warned Marina Silva.

More than 48,674 fire outbreaks have been detected since the beginning of this year in the region that is home to the largest tropical rainforest on the planet, an increase of 76 percent compared to the same period last year.