Fires More Than 500km Long Devastate Southern Amazon

The fire, which stretches for more than 500 km, has devastated a large area of ​​the southern Amazon since Wednesday. The images were taken by the European monitoring program Copernicus and shared with Brazil.

Satellite images show that this huge fire is starting on the border between Bolivia and Brazil and is engulfing the Brazilian states of Amazonas, Rondônia and Mato Grosso with devastating fury. These fires continued on Thursday and have been intensified by new fire fronts that have emerged in the last few hours.

This Wednesday, August 28, the Amazon recorded the highest number of fires in a single day since 2010. According to data provided by INPE, the National Institute for Space Research, between 9:00 p.m. on Tuesday, August 27, and Wednesday, August 20, 59. The Amazon recorded a record 2,433 fires.

The number of fires, mostly caused by human activity, had already been rising since early August but has increased sharply in recent days. In the first three days of this week alone, Monday, the 26th, Tuesday and Wednesday, 5,933 new fires of concern were reported in the Amazon.

In cities across the region, including some very densely populated ones like the Amazonas state capital of Manaus, with more than two million people, the air people breathe contains up to ten times the levels of pollution and heavy metals that are safe for humans and animals. Last weekend, before the fires began to mount, thick clouds of toxic smoke from this environmental tragedy reached cities thousands of miles away, including Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro in Brazil’s southeastern region, and Brasilia in the central west, where the patch of pollution made it seem like day had turned to night.