Quito declares emergency due to forest fires

( Spanish) – The Quito City Hall declared a state of emergency on Wednesday due to the fires that intensified on Tuesday in several areas of the Ecuadorian capital.

Mayor Pabel Muñoz said at a press conference that the Emergency Operations Committee (COE) made the decision based on the recommendation of a technical report. The measure seeks to strengthen coordination between the capital and national authorities.

Muñoz added that firefighters had made progress in containing the fires by Wednesday morning, but the fire flared up again. Therefore, he estimated that the spots will not be extinguished today.

“The Fire Department, with its experience, has told us that we are not in the same situation as yesterday, nor are we in the same situation as in the morning. Yesterday we had a very critical situation, in the morning we had a fairly controlled situation. Today we are in an intermediate situation: we are neither in the emergency situation of yesterday nor are we in the positive point that we were in the morning,” he said.

According to the mayor, in addition to the firefighters, 1,600 police officers and 180 members of the Armed Forces are working to maintain security and respond to the emergency.

On Tuesday night, Ecuador’s Attorney General’s Office reported on its X account that it has opened an investigation to determine the causes of the fires in the country’s capital.