Colombia, a Usually Wet Nation, Reels Amid Widespread Wildfires
Firefighters, many of them volunteers, have been confronting dozens of blazes amid high temperatures this month. The conditions have been linked to climate change.
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About 600 firefighters have been battling the fires in the hills surrounding Bogotá, Colombia.Credit...Federico Rios for The New York Times
Helicopters hauling buckets of water fly toward the mountains where fires burn, a thick haze periodically covers the sky, and residents have been ordered to wear masks and limit driving because of the poor air quality.
For a full week, firefighters have been battling fires in the mountains around Bogotá, Colombia’s capital, as dozens of other blazes have burned across the country, in what officials say is the hottest January in three decades.
The president has declared a national disaster and asked for international help fighting the fires, which he says could reach beyond the Andes Mountains and erupt on the Pacific Coast and in the Amazon.
Colombia’s fires this month are unusual in a country where people are more accustomed to torrential rain and mudslides than fire and ash. They have been attributed to high temperatures and drought exacerbated by the climate phenomenon known as El Niño.
Ricardo Lozano, a geologist and former environment minister of Colombia, said El Niño was a natural phenomenon that occurred cyclically, but that with climate change, “these events are more and more intense and more and more extreme.”
Heavy smoke from wildfires near the capital, Bogotá.Credit...Federico Rios for The New York Times
This month brought record temperatures to Colombia, including 111 degrees Fahrenheit in Honda, a colonial town between the cities of Medellín and Bogotá. It has dried out forests, savannas and normally damp highlands known as páramos, turning parts of the country into a tinderbox.
As dozens of fires have burned, more than 100 square miles have been scorched, and with temperatures continuing to soar, officials say more fires are likely before the rainy season begins in April.
Fires have also broken out in neighboring Venezuela and Ecuador, including in an ecological preserve.
Across Colombia, firefighting crews made up in many places of volunteers say they are outmatched by fires fueled by the heat and winds.
“One of the hardest things is finishing a shift and turning back to look at the mountains only to see more hot spots,” said Santiago Botello, a risk-management coordinator for Bogotá’s volunteer firefighters. The volunteers, he said, make up about one-fourth of the roughly 600 firefighters who have been battling the fires in the mountains above the city of nearly eight million.
“It is physically exhausting,” said Mr. Botello, adding, “Obviously it is not common to see something like this in Bogotá.”
Three fires in the mountains that run along one side of Bogotá, known as the Cerros Orientales, sent plumes of smoke pouring over the city last week, grounding dozens of flights and leading to evacuations of some schools and buildings.
The mayor, Carlos Fernando Galán, declared Bogotá’s fires officially under control late Sunday, though not totally extinguished, and on Monday, new fires were reported both in the city and in Sopó, a town on its outskirts.
