Apocalyptic postcards by the smoke of the Amazon

Fire smoke in the Amazon is wreaking havoc throughout Brazil and entire cities remain unresolved as they are unable to breathe. For example, in the state of Rondonia, in the north-west of the country, and one of the areas most affected by the worst fires of all time, people live under a layer of smoke that has enveloped the region. "I have been living here for 20 years and have seen many fires, but this smoke in recent days, I have never seen anything like it before," said Welis da Claiana, 25, at AFP, in Porto Velho, the capital, in Rondonia.

In São Paulo, for example, in recent days, a situation that has attracted attention on social networks has been generated. Around three o'clock in the afternoon, a thick cloud formed by sea winds from the south and southeast covered the sky, leaving the city in the dark. On his Twitter account, the NGO Greenpeace published a photo of the event, noting that "the smoke of the fires in the Amazon has returned to the skies of São Paulo, more than 3,000 km, in the dark. What happens in the Amazon does not stay in the Amazon. "

Back in the Rondonia region, Da Claiana said that "the smoke had affected 100% of our daily lives, we woke up tired of breathing smoke", and that the fires of recent days have threatened the rental company. of cars. where he works and forced the cancellation of flights at the local airport. "The visibility was horrible, nobody could do anything," he said, accusing the "big farmers" of being at the origin of the flames. At one point, the fires started to approach his house. She closed the doors and windows to avoid the smoke, but nevertheless had to take her daughter to the hospital quickly after starting to have trouble breathing. One of his colleagues was also hospitalized for breathing problems.

The cause of air pollution can be found a short distance from the city of half a million inhabitants. Many fires devour logged forest areas for livestock or crops. Seen from above, the destruction is dramatic: walls of bright orange flames advance through the vast forest as huge columns of black smoke rise to the sky.

Bands of forest were stripped of vegetation in an apparent preparation to burn. AFP journalists traveling by road and by road in the border with Bolivia have seen other people catch fire or charring themselves. In some places, isolated trees are still standing, surrounded by scorched earth, as evidence of the destruction of a forest that, according to the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), is home to hundreds of animal species and threatened plants.
More than half of the 79,513 fires recorded in Brazil this year took place in the Amazon and 1,130 started between Friday and Saturday. "It increases every year," says Eliana Amorim in Porto Velho, accusing the fires of deforestation. "But people's consciousness does not increase."