Brigade members and residents fought on Friday against the forest fires unleashed in the Argentine province of Salta and neighboring areas of southern Bolivia, which have destroyed thousands of hectares in recent weeks and threaten aboriginal communities, aggravated by the lack of rain and a severe drought. in various regions of Argentina.
No definitive figures have been given on the forest destruction of the outbreaks that have been occurring discontinuously since September, since as some go out others come on. So far this year, 50,000 hectares have been consumed in Salta. Justice is investigating whether some fires were intentional to prepare the land for crops.
The fire affects Colonia Santa Rosa, a town in the Salta department of Orán; the town of Isla de Cañas, in the department of Iruya, and the Bella Vista area, in the Chicoana department, among other forest and jungle areas.
Aboriginal residents are participating in extinction tasks due to the lack of sufficient resources, indicated María Isabel Canabiri, president of the Tinkunaku Indigenous Community of the city of San Ramón de la Nueva Orán, located more than 1,600 kilometers northwest of Buenos Aires.
The Salta government has reported that more than one hundred brigade members carried out intense suffocation tasks in the sources that remained active. Police firefighters, volunteer firefighters and Civil Defense worked.
“The residents called for themselves and formed gangs. We are the guardians of biodiversity in our territory. The fire is close and the brothers from Angosto del Paraní and Río Blanquito (in the department of Orán) joined forces to put out the fire,” Canabiri told the Todo Noticias channel.
The crews made up of several dozen people make firebreaks with manual tools such as machetes and wait for it to rain in the area, which is not expected in the coming days amid a severe drought that affects several regions of Argentina.
Neighbors of Colonia Santa Rosa said that for more than two weeks they have been affected by smoke and have respiratory problems.
The Aboriginal Pastoral of the diocese of Orán expressed its solidarity with the affected communities in a statement in which it stressed the need to preserve the earth’s resources.
Meanwhile, in the south of Bolivia, the authorities of the Tarija region have declared a health alert to send health personnel to the inhabitants of communities who complain of conjunctivitis, burns, and heat stroke.
In Bermejo, on the Bolivian border with Argentina, the fires have been going on for 15 days with seven sources.
The firefighters fighting the flames have had problems because the fire advanced to areas that are difficult to access “complicating the movement of people to put it out,” Juan Alberto Salazar, commander of the Forest Firefighters Group, told the press.
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