COP30 conference centre evacuated as fire breaks out
A raging fire inside the venue of the UN’s climate conference in Brazil, where Australians are in attendance, saw panicked delegates run for the exits. WATCH THE VIDEO.
A fire at a pavilion inside the venue of the UN’s climate talks in Brazil forced an evacuation on Friday morning AEDT as panicked delegates ran for the exits to escape the flames and smoke.
UN and security crews rushed with extinguishers to try to put out the blaze at the COP30 site in Belem, with smoke engulfing the corridor and people shouting “fire!”
Dozens of firefighters arrived at the scene as smoke billowed inside and out of the conference building.
The fire was reported in an area of pavilions where sideline events are held during the annual talks.
The fire took place as ministers from around the world were deep in negotiations aimed at breaking a deadlock over fossil fuels, climate finance and trade measures, with one day left in the two-week conference.
Australia had one of the largest contingents of the 194 countries, with 496 representatives at the event including Energy Minister Chris Bowen.
The fire has been brought under control, causing no injuries, tourism minister Celso Sabino said.
“The incident has already been contained,” Mr Sabino said on Brazilian television, but it wasn’t clear when conference business would resume.
Forensic teams will try to establish how the fire started but he said he doubts it was criminal.
“You’d have to be a really awful person to set fire to a COP,” he told reporters.
Kimberly Humphrey, an emergency medicine specialist attending COP30 with Doctors for the Environment Australia, was working in a room when she received messages about a fire.
Dr Humphrey left the site and volunteered at a medical centre where some people were treated for smoke inhalation and others suffered emotional distress.
“It’s not what you expect to happen when you are at a conference,” she told AFP.
“Initially, there’s a sense of disbelief … The first thing I thought was, ‘Oh, this isn’t real’.
“It’s really a combination of terror and not having a good emergency plan, not knowing where the exits are, but also what I need to do as a doctor and needing to help people, too.”
The lead Pacific campaigner for Greenpeace Australia Pacific Shiva Gounden, who is at the event, said the fire was at one of the pavilions and ended up burning a hole through the ceiling.
“There was a little bit of hysteria I guess, people a bit fearful,” he said, RNZ reports.
“So they were running from one side of the building to the other to exit, and then the [UNFCCC] Secretariet asked everyone to evacuate – obviously through messages et cetera because there’s no system you can utilise as a sound system to announce that fire.”
The building has suffered some damage, however, and it will be several hours before attendees will be allowed back in.
A few hours before the fire, UN Secretary-General António Guterres urged countries to compromise and “show willingness and flexibility to deliver results,” even if they fall short of the strongest measures some nations want.
“We are down to the wire and the world is watching Belem,” Mr Guterres said, asking negotiators to engage in good faith in the last two scheduled days of talks, which already missed a self-imposed deadline Wednesday for progress on a few key issues.
The conference, with this year’s edition known as COP30, frequently runs longer than its scheduled two weeks.
“Communities on the front lines are watching, too — counting flooded homes, failed harvests, lost livelihoods — and asking, ‘how much more must we suffer?’” Mr Guterres said. “They’ve heard enough excuses and demand results.”
Asked whether he had a message for Donald Trump, who has pulled the world’s second-largest carbon polluter out of climate talks: “We are waiting for you.”
When asked if there was any hope that Mr Trump would change his tune on climate change, Mr Guterres smiled and said: “Hope is the last thing that dies.”
– with AFP
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Originally published as COP30 conference centre evacuated as fire breaks out
