Helicopters carrying buckets of water fly to the mountains where fires are burning, a thick fog periodically blankets the sky and residents have been ordered to wear masks and limit driving due to poor air quality.
For a full week, firefighters have been battling wildfires in the mountains around Bogota, the Colombian capital, as dozens of other blazes have burned across the country in the hottest January in three decades.
The president has declared a national disaster and called for international help to fight the fires, which he says could reach beyond the Andes mountains and explode on the Pacific coast and in the Amazon.
The fires in Colombia this month are unusual in a country where people are more used to torrential rains and mudslides than fire and ash. They have been attributed to high temperatures and drought exacerbated by the climate phenomenon known as El Niño.
Ricardo Lozano, a geologist and former Colombian environment minister, said El Niño was a natural phenomenon that occurred cyclically, but that with climate change, “these events are becoming more intense and more extreme.”
This month brought record temperatures to Colombia, including 111 degrees Fahrenheit in Honda, a colonial town between the cities of Medellín and Bogotá. It has dried up forests, savannahs and usually wet uplands, known as páramos, turning parts of the country into a box.
With dozens of fires burning, more than 100 square miles have burned, and with temperatures continuing to rise, officials say more fires are likely before the rainy season begins in April.
Fires have also broken out in neighboring Venezuela and Ecuador, including in an ecological reserve.
Across Colombia, fire crews made up in many places of volunteers say they have overcome fires fueled by heat and winds.
“One of the hardest things is to finish a shift and go back to look at the mountains only to see more hot spots,” said Santiago Botello, risk management coordinator for Bogotá’s volunteer firefighters. The volunteers, he said, make up about a quarter of the roughly 600 firefighters battling the blazes in the mountains above the city of nearly eight million.
“It’s physically exhausting,” Mr. Botello said, adding, “Obviously it’s not common to see something like this in Bogotá.”
Three wildfires in the mountains that run along one side of Bogotá, known as the Cerros Orientales, sent smoke billowing over the city last week, grounding dozens of flights and prompting the evacuation of some schools and buildings.
The mayor, Carlos Fernando Galán, officially declared Bogotá’s fires under control late Sunday, although they were not completely out, and on Monday, new fires were reported both in the city and in Sopó, a town on its outskirts.
Helicopters continued to hover over Bogotá. Some were Black Hawk helicopters donated by the United States in 2022 and renamed by the Colombian government to “Guacamayas,” or macaws, marking their new role in fighting fires, rather than the decades-old drug war.
As helicopters carried water to hot spots, hiking trails that usually draw tourists with their lush forests, mountain streams and panoramic views remained closed.
Eduardo Campos, a biologist who runs a company that offers hikes in the mountains, said a carpet of leaves left by non-native species such as pines and eucalyptus had dried up during El Niño and fueled the flames.
The damage was extensive, Mr. Campos said. The poor farmers living in the mountains had been displaced. animals, including birds, mammals and small snakes had been incinerated; and parts of the forest had been decimated.
“It will take years to restore the forest,” he said.
Susana Muhamad, Colombia’s environment minister, said Friday that 95 percent of fires across the country were caused by humans rather than natural causes such as lightning – either accidentally, while burning trash or clearing land for cultivation, or by criminal intent. As of this week, 26 people had been taken into custody.
At least one person was killed in the fires, a 74-year-old man in La Capilla, a small town about 70 miles northeast of Bogota. Authorities said his body was found in his home after the fire was put out.
The fires were particularly devastating for the paramos, which are home to rare plants called frailejones and are vital for the urban population’s water supply.
Hernán Morantes, an environmental lawyer and advocate for Santurbán Páramo, a nature reserve 300 miles northeast of Bogotá, said there had been fires in the area before, “but never on this scale.”
Colombia’s government is asking citizens to report wildfires with the hashtag “El Niño is not a game.”
Seeking international help, including the United Nations, President Gustavo Petro said this weekend: “The global warming emergency, combined with the El Niño phenomenon, has necessitated action on many fronts. One has to do with heat waves and human health. Another one with forest fires. Another with the stress on the water supply.”
Brazil, Canada and Peru have pledged to send aid to Colombia, the government said.
Mr Petro said countries in the region must prepare to face what could be “a planetary emergency in the Amazon rainforest”.
In recent years, wildfires in Brazil have destroyed huge swaths of rainforest.
Mr Petro has made tackling climate change central to his agenda, including reducing deforestation and weaning the country off fossil fuel exports. While some in Colombia applauded the president’s emphasis on the link between this month’s fires and climate change, others criticized him for not taking concrete preparedness measures.
Mr. Morantes, the lawyer and advocate, said budget cuts to fire departments and a lack of planning had limited the country’s ability to respond to wildfires, a claim echoed by officials previously involved in disaster relief. .
“We should have already had all the means of international cooperation ready, planes, everything,” he said. “The point is that the country is not ready. It’s obviously not ready.”
Responding to the claims, Colombia’s environment ministry said in a statement Monday that it had been planning for El Niño for months, citing the aerial reaction now underway as an example.
The ministry said more than $2 billion had been set aside for fire preparedness and response and that a community network had been set up for prevention and communication purposes.
“This situation is not an unexpected series of fires,” the statement said. “It is the El Niño phenomenon combined with the climate crisis that has led to extremely dry conditions. To this, let’s add the hand of man who, intentionally or accidentally, caused the fires.”
Federico Rios contributed to the report.
