Sao Paulo, the largest city in Brazil, awoke shrouded in wildfire smoke on Monday as a record number of fires blazed in the greater Sao Paulo state and the greater Amazon, killing at least three and threatening to engulf one of the world’s largest ecosystems.
Wildfires in the Amazon Rainforest have long been a significant environmental problem for Brazil as well as other neighboring states such as Bolivia, Peru, Venezuela, and Colombia. Annual fires became a global political lightning rod in 2019 when conservative former President Jair Bolsonaro was still in office. A host of American celebrities — from actor Leonardo DiCaprio to singer Madonna to self-proclaimed “climate justice advocates” such as Mark Ruffalo — condemned Bolsonaro for failing to support radical leftist climate alarmism policies, blaming him for policies that would ultimately result in a drop in Amazon deforestation.
The current spread of wildfires, under socialist President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, is the worst in over a decade. From January to August 19, Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research (INPE) documented 88,900 fires in the country, the worst since 2010 and only comparable to that year, 2004 and 2007. Lula was president in all four cases. Notably, Lula blamed arson this weekend for the spreading flames; the celebrities enraptured with the Amazon wildfire crisis in 2019 have not reclaimed the cause at press time.
The Brazilian newspaper O Globo reported on Monday that the amount of land burning this year is equivalent to 9,000 soccer fields and counting, affecting eight states and the Brasilia Federal District (DF). Most affected states are deep in the Brazilian Amazon, though the nation’s capital and Sao Paulo are also experiencing high levels of unhealthy air quality. Sao Paulo placed 45 of its cities under a 180-day state of emergency decree.
The state of Sao Paulo is facing the highest number of fire outbreaks since 1998, the first year that INPE began tracking Amazon fires. As of Sunday, officials documented a record 3,482 fires in Sao Paulo this month, dwarfing the August previous record of 2,444 wildfires in 2010. The fires have reportedly caused damages worth 350 million reais ($63.6 mllion) in Sao Paulo alone.
As of Monday, three deaths have been recorded: one person dying on August 18 while trying to protect a rural property from the flames and another two on August 23 similarly trying to extinguish a fire at an unspecified plant.
The Brazilian outlet UOL reported that at least 800 people have been left homeless by the fires as of Monday. Several hundred, at least, are also believed to have been harmed by the wildfire smoke, including over 500 people treated by medical staff at an attempted music festival in Sao Paulo state abruptly canceled on Sunday after smoke plumes made it impossible to remain outside. About 60 music festival attendees were reportedly hospitalized for smoke inhalation.
Lula’s socialist government held an emergency meeting on Sunday in which the president blamed arsonists, not poor forest management, for the fires.
“You finish extinguishing the fire, you turn around and it comes back bigger,” Lula lamented, “so you extinguish it and it comes back again.”
Lula claimed in a social media post that his government had not detected a single fire attributable to natural causes and that he had tasked police to launch investigations into potential culprits.
The president appears to have the support of the conservative governor of Sao Paulo, Tarcisio de Freitas, who announced on Sunday that police had already arrested two individuals in connection with the fires.
“All with gasoline, setting fire, wanting to aggravate the situation,” he explained, according to UOL. “We will not tolerate it, the security forces are mobilized to prevent this type of action” he added.
Lula’s Environment Minister Marina Silva reiterated the allegedly unprecedented nature of fires ravaging the swamplands of Sao Paulo at the emergency meeting.
“It is not natural in Sao Paulo, under any circumstances, that there be various fronts of fires in two days that involve various municipalities at the same time,” Silva said. “It is an authentic war against fire and delinquency, an atypical situation.”
Silva also appeared to address growing public discontent by insisting in her remarks, “it is not true that the federal government has failed.”
Notably, Bolsonaro also accused arsonists of setting fires in 2019, but leftist activists widely mocked him for the claim.
Lula’s focus on declaring the fires arson, rather than fighting the fires, preceded the Brazilian Institute of Environment and Renewable Natural Resources (IBAMA) to demand more firefighters and equipment on Monday to address the crisis. O Globo reported on Monday that Lula offered firefighters an air force transport aircraft, but it did not fly any missions on Sunday.
The catastrophe in Brazil has largely failed to make international headlines or attract Hollywood attention. Among those silent are Leonardo DiCaprio — who famously feuded with Bolsonaro online over fires during his presidency — who has posted on social media about Brazil in the past week without mentioning the fires. Mark Ruffalo, who actively campaigned for Lula during the 2022 presidential election, has also said nothing of the fires on his extremely active Twitter account, which is currently focused on the war in Gaza.
President Joe Biden threatened to destroy the Brazilian economy as a candidate in 2020, stating in a debate that he would, as president, browbeat Bolsonaro to take American money or face “significant economic consequences.” Biden has not made any public comments on the current fires at press time; the last White House statement from the president on Brazil addressed flooding in May.
