Wildfires raged by means of sugarcane fields in northern São Paulo state on Saturday, sending clouds of smoke blanketing close by cities so fully that authorities banned out of doors sports activities.
A Brazilian championship soccer match was cancelled as a result of ban in Ribeirão Preto, a metropolis in essentially the most important area within the west of the state of São Paulo.
Some state highways had been closed as a consequence of decreased visibility. Native tv confirmed pictures of cattle carcasses that had died in fields from warmth and smoke inhalation.
“The firefighters cannot management the flames. We won’t do something,” farmer Silvio Dantas, 56, informed Reuters in his area as a column of whitish-grey smoke rose on the horizon.
“The hearth has burned vegetation, destroyed homes and killed livestock. That is very exhausting,” he mentioned.
The Sao Paulo authorities mentioned 36 cities had been on “excessive alert” due to the fires which have unfold on the peak of the dry season, when fields are parched and temperatures are excessive.
“We’re renting planes to spray water, along with the hearth division planes,” mentioned São Paulo Governor Tarcisio de Freitas, who has created an emergency job pressure to take care of the scenario.
On Friday, in Urupes, close to Ribeirão Preto, two firefighters died whereas making an attempt to place out the flames at a sugar mill, in an space the place 200 hectares of sugar cane plantation had been destroyed.
Raizen RAIZ4.SA, the world’s largest sugarcane processor, mentioned operations at one in every of its vegetation in Sertaozinho had been suspended since Thursday as a consequence of fires in sugarcane fields.
In São Paulo, 350 kilometers to the south, Brazil’s largest metropolis, smoke crammed the sky on Friday however cleared on Saturday.
Brazil’s wildfire season usually peaks in August and September. This yr, wildfires began unusually early within the Pantanal, the world’s largest wetland, in late Might, whereas the variety of fires within the Amazon rainforest rose to a two-decade excessive in July, authorities information confirmed.