Wildfires destroy thousands of acres of savanna and pastures

SAO PAULO, Brazil -- Pedro Paulo Borre is frightened by what he sees from his office window: the huge, white clouds of smoke billowing from steadily approaching wildfires.

Driven by strong winds and unusually dry weather, fires are claiming thousands of acres of savanna and pasture land along the southern Amazon and midwestern flatlands.

"The city is enveloped in choking clouds of smoke," Borre said Friday by phone from Guaranta do Norte, a town of 30,000 people about 1,000 miles northwest of Sao Paulo. "It's getting hard to breathe."

About 60 firefighters, with the help of a helicopter and three airplanes, are battling the 1,500-acre blaze about 22 miles outside the city limits, said Norival Batista dos Santos, the city's agricultural and environmental affairs secretary.

While authorities say the fire should be controlled within a few days, that's little comfort to residents.

"The number of people hospitalized with breathing problems has increased dramatically," state health secretary Maria Socorro Dantas said.

The problem is especially critical among young children and the elderly, she said.

Most of the 60,000 fires detected across Brazil so far this year were started by farmers burning off jungle brush to clear pasture land and to fertilize the region's poor soil.

Although agricultural burning is illegal until Sept. 15, when the rainy season officially begins, many farmers have started early. Now, the fires are out of control and moving into the jungle.

Borre, who is Guaranta do Norte's planning secretary, said the blaze now threatening the city began Wednesday when a farmer lit a fire to clear some brush.

Earlier, another fire outside the city claimed 50,000 acres of forest, Borre said.

Humid rainforest rarely burns, but Guaranta do Norte is located in a part of the southern Amazon known as the "arc of destruction," where settlers and years of logging have left the forest so thin that it now burns easily.

The dead wood and fallen foliage below the forest canopy make for excellent fuel.

"Basically, it has been so hot that conditions are ripe for things to spread out of control," said Rubens Vargas Filho, who is in charge of controlling burning and forest fires for Brazil's environmental protection agency, Ibama.

Vargas said that the success of the state's burning control program, which combines education on how to burn safely and the threat of stiff fines, has actually made this year's blaze worse.