More than 2,000 fires in Sao Paulo state in just two days. Unbreathable air in dozens of cities

In an unprecedented environmental and human tragedy in the region, the Brazilian state of Sao Paulo recorded a frightening 2,316 forest fires in just two days, Thursday and Friday, killing two people and virtually shutting down important cities where the air became unbearable.

Data that even exceeds those recorded for the same period by all the states in the Amazon region, which is also breaking records for fires, was released this Saturday, August 24, by INPE, the National Institute for Space Research, which is monitoring the progress of the flames in real time.

The number of fires, which authorities said were started more than 90 percent by intentional or unintentional human activity, is seven times greater than all such incidents recorded in the same 31 days of August that year.

In August 2023, the state of Sao Paulo, the richest and most populous state in Brazil with 45 million people and a highly developed agriculture and industry, experienced 352 fires, which was considered large at the time, but this year, 352 fires in 48 hours have been overcome immeasurably.

The flames are either due to human misconduct or to one of the worst droughts in decades and temperatures well above normal in the center of the state, namely in the region of Ribeirão Preto, a rich agricultural region with a city of 711 thousand inhabitants, as well as in the northwest of São Paulo, affecting important cities such as São José do Rio Preto, Presidente Prudente and Bauru, among many others.

This Friday, the governor of the state of São Paulo, Tarcisio de Freitas, declared a state of maximum fire alert in 30 inland cities and created a crisis office to study and take emergency measures.

Thick clouds of smoke caused by tens of thousands of hectares of burning land have made the air unbreathable in cities like Sao José do Rio Preto, for example, where the population of 465,000 people have been advised to wear masks and stay indoors, and where schools and even businesses have been forced to close.

In Urupes this Friday, two men died while fighting a fire in a factory, while in Pitangueiras, smoke that engulfed the national road caused a series of collisions between nine vehicles, between cars and trucks, leaving two people injured.

Even hundreds of kilometers away, in the city of São Paulo, with its population of more than 12.5 million, thousands of fires raging in the interior of the state, destroying forests, sugar cane fields and large agricultural areas, are causing discomfort and changes in daily routine.

The smell of burning spread through the streets of the country’s largest city, the sky became even grayer and even with the windows closed, the floors, walls and furniture in houses were black due to the accumulation of soot that had managed to penetrate through the cracks.