Brazil’s government send firefighters to combat wildfires on the border with Bolivia

Brasil de Fato

The Brazilian government has sent a group from the National Public Security Force (FNSP, in Portuguese) to curb wildfires affecting the Bolivian border strip, according to an extra edition of the Federal Official Gazette on Monday (9). 

The FNSP’s 37 military firefighters will be in humanitarian action until September 17 to fight wildfires that could also reach the Brazilian Pantanal, the country’s largest wetlands. The same group includes 25 personnel from the Federal District Military Fire Brigade (CBMDF, in Portuguese).

The military will fly over and analyze satellite maps to identify fire spots along the border with the states of Mato Grosso and Mato Grosso do Sul. The joint mission with the Bolivian government will also be preventive in nature to avoid new fire outbreaks reaching Brazilian territory.

According to the government, of the 112 fires recorded in recent weeks in the Pantanal region, 18 are active, 23 are under control by the task force led by the Center for Preventing and Combating Forest Fires (Prevfogo/Ibama, in Portuguese), and 71 have been extinguished.

Worrying situation

The Bolivian government has reported that 2.9 million hectares in 20 cities in the regions of Santa Cruz, Beni and Pando have been affected by forest fires. Last Thursday (5), the mayor’s office of La Paz, Bolivia’s capital, said that the air quality in the city is very worrying, a situation caused by the smoke from fires that are devastating several regions of the country.

Since April 8, medical brigades and rapid response teams from the Bolivian Ministry of Health have treated 5,000 people, including the civilian population and those responsible for containing the fires, in the departments of Santa Cruz, Beni and Pando. According to the Ministry’s official report, the most frequent illnesses reported were headaches, heat exhaustion, conjunctivitis and colds.

The Queimadas Program of Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research (INPE, in Portuguese) has been monitoring active hotspots in South American countries since 1998 and reported 25,913 hotspots in Brazil in August, the highest number in 14 years and three times higher than the historical average of 8,360.

The action on the border with Bolivia is being coordinated by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs through the Brazilian Cooperation Agency and led by a disaster specialist from the Ministry of Integration and Regional Development.

According to the government, the mission will act in coordination with the Brazilian Institute for the Environment and Renewable Natural Resources (Ibama, in Portuguese) and the Chico Mendes Institute for Biodiversity Conservation (ICMBio, in Portuguese), linked to the Ministry for the Environment and Climate Change.