'The Earth is crying out for help': as fires decimate South America, smoke shrouds its skies

Huge tracts of land have burned from largely man-made blazes in Ecuador, Paraguay, Peru, Brazil and other countries, with people suffocating from its fallout

By Tom Phillips in Porto Velho, Laurence Blair in Asunción, Dan Collyns in Lima and Thomas Graham in Santa Cruz

Wed 2 Oct 2024 09.00 EDT


Huge tracts of land have burned from largely man-made blazes in Ecuador, Paraguay, Peru, Brazil and other countries, with people suffocating from its fallout

By Tom Phillips in Porto Velho, Laurence Blair in Asunción, Dan Collyns in Lima and Thomas Graham in Santa Cruz
Supported by
Open Society Foundations
About this content
Wed 2 Oct 2024 09.00 EDT

“Blue, our sky is forever blue!” effuses the official anthem of Rondônia, a UK-sized chunk of the Amazon in the western reaches of Brazil. But the “pure crystalline” heavens celebrated by those lyrics have vanished in recent months.

Huge tracts of South America have been blanketed in smoke from largely man-made wildfires that are raging from Ecuador’s drought-stricken capital to Paraguay’s Chaco forest to the backlands of the greatest tropical jungle on Earth.

The smoke has been so dramatic that passenger planes have been unable to land in Rondônia’s riverside capital, Porto Velho, and schools have been forced to close. The government polyclinic run by Dr Lilian Samara de Melo Lima has seen a surge in patients suffering respiratory complaints, migraines and eye inflammation.

“These days we can’t even see the other bank of the river,” complained the Brazilian GP as she sheltered inside her clinic from the smog.

Lima, 45, was born and raised in Rondônia and has witnessed the toxic impact of wildfires before, as cattle ranchers and soy farmers use the Amazon’s annual “burning season” to clear land and carve new properties out of the region’s fast-shrinking rainforests.

More:
https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2024/oct/02/south-america-wildfire-smoke-deforestation-drought