RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – As 2022 begins, wildfires have consolidated as the main threat to three South American countries, having already affected more than ten provinces in Argentina and devastated more than 20,000 hectares on average the coast of Uruguay and another 31,000 hectares in Chile.
In Argentina, fires have broken out in eleven of the country’s 24 jurisdictions, prompting the Ministry of Environment and the Federal Council for the Environment (Cofema) to declare a so-called “fire emergency” for 12 months.
The measure is based on the extreme risk of forest and pasture fires, and coordination between jurisdictions and the federal government has been requested to strengthen prevention policies.
In addition, it was recommended to the federal authorities to repeat the measure to allocate the necessary extraordinary budget items for the actions.
In the first days of this year, 302,451 hectares were burned. The most affected during this period was the province of Córdoba, where more than 57,000 hectares have been burned. However, attention is now focused on Argentine Patagonia, a region that includes the provinces of Chubut, Neuquén, Río Negro, Santa Cruz, and Tierra del Fuego.
In Uruguay, coastal towns in the country’s south were hit by forest fires, which were most noticeable on the west coast, where 22,000 hectares burned in the departments of Río Negro and Paysandú.
The Uruguayan Institute of Meteorology (Inumet) reported that the country has a “very high risk” of forest fires, according to the Fire Weather Index (FWI), which is why the country is shown all in red.
The agency explained in a press release that the FWI is an index based on meteorological observations that were developed in Canada in 1970 to “estimate the risk of forest fires.”
The wildfires are also affecting Chile, which is fighting the flames mainly in the country’s south.
According to a report by the Chilean Forestry Agency (Conaf), more than 31,000 hectares had already been affected by the flames as of Monday, mainly in the regions of La Araucanía, Los Lagos, and Ñuble.
According to reports, the fire had already burned almost five times as much area as last year, when only over 6,000 hectares were affected.
The Chilean umbrella organization Conaf points out that 99.7 percent of forest fires are caused by human activity. Therefore, it has launched an awareness campaign to prevent tourists or locals from starting fires through incorrect behavior.