Fires that have burned thousands of hectares of forest in Brazil’s São Paulo state have been brought under control, authorities said Monday, but a warning for new fires remains in place.
Since last Thursday, some 2,700 fires have been reported in the vast agricultural state and more than 40 municipalities have been put on high alert.
According to authorities, more than 20,000 hectares have been destroyed.
There were no more fires on Monday morning, Governor Tarcisio de Freitas told local media.
He added that soldiers and firefighters remain in large numbers to “prevent fires from starting again” pending a period of dry weather.
Brazil has been hit by a series of extreme weather events, the most recent of which were massive forest fires in the Pantanal wetlands and once-in-a-century floods in the state of Rio Grande do Sul, which killed more than 170 people.
Due to the ongoing drought, the state of São Paulo is facing the worst August for forest fires in decades. According to the National Institute for Space Research, INPE, more than 3,480 separate fires have been recorded.
This was double the number recorded in the whole of 2023.
Several fires are still raging in the Brazilian Amazon, with the region experiencing the highest number of fires in nearly two decades.
According to experts and authorities, climate change has exacerbated the dry, hot conditions for wildfires. Most of these fires are set illegally to clear land for agriculture.
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