2024-02-10 21:22:31
Fires and hot spots detected from space reveal that Venezuela is burning. Capture: FIRMS – NASA
At the end of January, South America panicked following the publication of a heat map issued by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), which reflects that Venezuela, especially in the plains and Andean regions, is experiencing a “thermal anomaly on the ground, an approach to fires or potential fire points.”
Walter Obregón // Correspondent lapatilla.com
In the country, those areas where there are agricultural production units, the summer is used to burn the fields, as a method of preparing the land, leaving aside the use of tractors and harrows to minimize costs before place the seeds.
This practice has been accentuated in the last 20 years, due to the high prices of machine hours, which prevents a large number of Venezuelan producers from planning and paying, since the profits from the sales of crops brought to the market are low. National market.
Precarious fuel conditions also force producers to paralyze machines, trucks, tractors and other means of work in the field, justifying the implementation of archaic strategies to carry out their tasks, including burning, although in many of these cases be controlled.
However, there are other fires that have been occurring in Venezuela that have no control, and where the specialized agencies to mitigate them, such as Firefighters and Civil Protection, are not sufficiently equipped to act in the face of the increase in outbreaks that occur in different regions. from the country.
Whether under control or not, fires affect the increase in temperatures and the concern, apart from the El Niño phenomenon, is who is in charge of putting out the fire to stop the environmental pollution that affects citizens in general, who also enter into a season of respiratory problems. Likewise, people go out into the street, covering themselves from the sun with an umbrella, and they do not stop sweating “a lot” because of the intense heat.
The NASA map
The Fire Information Resource Management System (FIRMS) provides access, with minimal delay, to satellite imagery, hotspots/active fires and related products to identify location, extent and intensity of forest fire activity, reads in the description of its page: www-earthdata-nasa-gov.
FIRMS is a NASA platform that allows you to verify the number and extent of fires, which with its tools and applications provide geospatial data, products and services to support the fire management community in general and thus provide information to the public.
For the United States and Canada, active fire detections are available in real time. Over the rest of the world, global data is available within three hours of satellite observation.
Hot spots in Venezuela
To find out what is happening from the NASA map at the end of January, lapatilla.com extracted from the social network with a postgraduate degree in Water Resources Planning and Engineering at the Simón Bolívar University (USB).
“From January 1 to 29, 9,113 heat sources have been detected in Venezuela,” said Gil Solórzano on X (formerly Twitter), who mentioned that all states are above the average, except Falcón, Miranda and the Capital District. , which are above 100% of the outbreaks in the first month of the year.
Likewise, he pointed out that the Apure states register 2,434 outbreaks for 26.7%; in Guárico 1,586 (17.4%); Bolívar with 1,307 (14.3%) and Anzoátegui with 901 (10.0%), being, according to these data from engineer Alfredo Gil, 68.3% of the national total.
“This hot present is the loss of more than seven million hectares of natural cover that Venezuela has suffered in the last 40 years,” independent Venezuelan journalist Fritz Sánchez stated in X, citing a report from MapsBiomas.
On February 5, journalist Rosmina Suárez Piña wrote on the social network , he said following having spoken with engineer Alfredo Gil Solórzano.
Fires: nothing new
In 2023 Venezuela was the third country in South America where the most fires occurred
On August 19 of last year, the Minister of Interior Relations, Justice and Peace, Remigio Ceballos, said that “Venezuela’s firefighters have extinguished more than 13,000 fires in the country so far in 2023,” which means that the country had spent most of its months in flames.
The senior official detailed, according to official figures, that of the total fires, 6,854 were vegetation, plus 4,000 were debris, 1,430 were structures, 1,118 were vehicles and 535 were electrical, Efe reported at the time.
The NGO La Tierra se Calienta has made some considerations regarding the “arsons in Venezuela”, asking a question: “Why would someone start a fire in the jungle?” The answer found is simple: “To obtain short-term economic benefits.”
For this organization of environmentalists, “the forest fire season in Venezuela is a recurring phenomenon, but in recent years, there has been an alarming increase in fires caused by humans.”
Puntually La Tierra se Calienta quotes: “Illegal logging, agriculture and livestock are some of the main causes of arson fires in Venezuela.” Likewise, he assures that “farmers and ranchers use fire to clear the fields and prepare the land for planting or for grazing livestock” and describe this method as “dangerous and uncontrollable, since the fire can spread quickly, destroying large areas of forests and jungles.”
Arson fires affect fauna and flora, but also human health. The NGO La Tierra se Calienta explains that “the burning of biomass produces large quantities of toxic gases and fine particles, which increases the risk of respiratory and cardiovascular diseases in the nearby population.”
Apart from this, as environmental experts it is clear that fires release large amounts of carbon dioxide, contributing to climate change and its negative effects on the planet.
Organizations without endowment
By force of will and practically risking the lives of their officials, the Firefighters and Civil Protection are attacking the vegetation fires that have spread in several states of the country, but these organizations do not have the necessary equipment to make the task more effective. and quick to fulfill.
“Everything must start with the organization of the Ministry of the Environment, with the Environmental Brigades that might be said to not exist or are well hidden,” said a Civil Protection official in the plains area of the country, where fires occur most frequently.
“The fire brigade units are not in a position to operate, and knowing that the People’s Guard is one of the components that has water tankers that might be used to put out fires, when collaboration is required, the trucks do not have diesel fuel.” or any other problem appears,” commented the official consulted by lapatilla.com.
“We have dedicated ourselves to attending to these emergencies with clappers (a thick rubber tool with a wooden handle, with which they hit the flames until they are extinguished), machetes, shovels, and in this way we create firebreak paths to prevent the fire from advancing,” he explained.
With these working conditions, officials are at risk every time a vegetation fire appears. Many pray that these events are not of great magnitude, as recently occurred in the Valparaíso region (Chile), because due to the lack of specialized equipment they might become an uncontrollable situation with great material and human losses.
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