Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva admitted Tuesday that Brazil is “not 100% prepared” to face the wave of forest fires hitting the country and which his environment minister attributes to “climate terrorism.”
“We were not 100% prepared (…) There are very few states (federated, editor’s note) with civil defense, firefighters and fire brigades,” Lula lamented during a meeting in Brasilia.
The government will allocate 514 million reais (84.24 million euros) to face the crisis.
Environment Minister Marina Silva said earlier Tuesday that some of the fires were caused by “climate terrorism” and denounced fires set deep in the jungle, in an interview with state television.
The executive estimates that 18 million hectares of forest have been destroyed by the fire, an area similar to that of Uruguay.
Hundreds of firefighters managed on Tuesday to stop the progression of the gigantic fire that has been burning since Sunday in the national park of Brasilia, and which was about to reach residential areas of the capital.
Local authorities, however, said the “most critical moment” of the fire was “behind us.”
According to the Ministry of Environment, firefighters are still battling 108 fires across the country.
Some 2,400 hectares of forest have been ravaged by the flames in this national park, a natural reserve of 42,000 hectares, according to the president of the Chico Mendes Institute for Biodiversity Conservation, Mauro Pires.
This has “all the characteristics of arson,” Pires told a news conference.
This concerns “only one” of the dozens of fires that broke out around the capital, the others having probably been started by farmers or homeless people who “lost control”, qualified the vice-governor of Brasilia, Celina Leao.
The state of Sao Paulo went from 520 active fires at the end of last week to just 25 at the end of Monday, according to data released by the National Institute for Space Research (INPE), a state agency, based on satellite data.
In Brazil, the number of fires recorded so far in September (57,312) has already exceeded the total for the same month last year (46,498), according to data published by INPE
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