'The Sun Didn't Sting So Much Before': Fires Stun Colombia's Andes

Nemocon, (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 28th Jan, 2024) The once bright green Andean forest where Maria Yadira Jimenez worked as a tour guide has been reduced to ashes.

Since Monday, forest fires have been advancing on Nemocon, a rural area with beautiful landscapes about 60 kilometers (37 miles) outside the Colombian capital Bogota.

Though usually cool, the mountains surrounding the town have become a hellscape, with the blazes driving out residents and wildlife.

Distraught, Jimenez joined volunteers who -- along with firefighters, rescuers, police and the military -- are fighting to extinguish one of the 34 fires that the government has detected in Colombia, which has declared a "natural disaster" amid hot, dry conditions due to the El Nino climate phenomenon.

Fires have razed more than 17,000 hectares (42,000 acres) across Colombia since November, when the drought started and temperatures started to rise, authorities say.

With no experience in emergency response or any fireproof clothing, the volunteers follow in the footsteps of firefighters and use jugs of water to cool areas that have been brought under control.

With picks, shovels and machetes, they stir up the smoldering earth to make sure the fires don't spark back up.

"This is a disaster that is going to bring very serious consequences. Birds were burned, native species were lost and everything was affected," the 46-year-old Jimenez tells AFP.

The area's environmental authority rescued a disoriented fox and an owl from the smoke, but other animals were not so lucky, perishing in the flames.