Amazon fires: smoke from burning rainforest plunges Sao Paulo into darkness

Smoke from a record number of fires in the world’s largest rainforest causes ‘apocalyptic’ scenes.

A satellite image show several fires burning in the Brazilian Amazon forest. Picture: NASA

Darkness descended over Brazil’s biggest city as smoke from wildfires burning 1,700 miles away in the Amazon rainforest reached the Atlantic coast.

The “apocalyptic” scenes described by residents in Sao Paulo are believed to have been caused by a record number of fires this year.

Satellite images showed 9,507 new forest fires in Brazil since Thursday, according to the country’s space agency. Most were in the Amazon Basin, the most biodiverse place on Earth and a critical bulwark against climate change. The rainforest has a crucial role in absorbing carbon and pumping oxygen into the atmosphere — and the fires and deforestation add to carbon levels.

Just when we thought we couldn’t do any more harm to our planet, we did, we destroyed the very last thing that gave us life!#Amazonia #AmazonFire pic.twitter.com/Xlv08CHlLO

— MIRAN (@miraniseinii) August 21, 2019

More than 74,000 fires have been detected between January and August, the most since records began in 2013 and 84 per cent more than in the same period last year.

The latest figures confirm concerns that since President Bolsonaro took office in January illegal miners and farmers have been involved in a free-for-all land grab, devastating large areas of the forest to make way for ranching and logging.

Good morning. Perhaps, you wanna know what the apocalypse is gonna look like? This was São Paulo, yesterday at 3pm #PrayforAmazonia pic.twitter.com/8uvSlZe1mO

— André Só (@AndreTheSolo) August 20, 2019

Images published by the space agency on Tuesday showed the northernmost state of Roraima covered in thick, dark smoke. Amazonas state had already declared an emergency over the fires this month. Acre, on the border with Peru, has been on environmental alert since Friday.

Wildfires are frequent during the dry season in Brazil but they are also deliberately started to illegally deforest land.

Mr Bolsonaro dismissed the spread of fires, attributing the increase to the time of year when farmers use flames to clear land: “I used to be called Captain Chainsaw. Now I am Nero, setting the Amazon aflame. But it is the season of the queimada [burning],” he said.

He claims that his country’s environmental regulations and law enforcement agencies are biased against economic development and has said the rainforest should be exploited.

The president has repeatedly criticised the space agency. A record amount of Brazil’s Amazon rainforest was cut down or destroyed last month, according to satellite data. Mr Bolsonaro claimed that the figures were misleading and subsequently fired the agency’s head, Ricardo Galvao, whom he accused of being “in the service” of environmental lobby groups.

The space agency said the large number of forest fires could not be attributed to the dry season or weather alone.

In Sao Paulo Sofia Geld, 29, described an eerie haze over the city in midafternoon: “When the sky closed in I thought this is seriously the start of something. Even on rainy days it doesn’t usually get that dark,” she said.

The Times