For the last 2 weeks, wildfires, caused by severe ongoing drought, have been plaguing the Cayo residents. This weekend, that concern grew sharply after burning forests in the western district began threatening nearby communities. The Government and environmental NGOs had to tackle that problem head-on with a series of interventions.
We start first tonight our coverage of this environmental crisis, with a recap of the weekend's interventions. The Forest Department, the National Fire Service, the Department of Environment, the Belmopan City Council, the San Ignacio/Santa Elena Town Council, and ranger volunteers such as the SoutherWildfire Group, partnered over the weekend to implement mitigation measures.
According to the Government, during the Easter weekend, very high daytime temperatures were recorded that eventually exceeded 100 degrees Fahrenheit. The satellite-based fire detection system for Resource Management System recorded approximately 80 fires per day, and those numbers quickly rose to over 117 fires last week.
The analysis showed that they were all related to agricultural landscapes such as sugar cane, milpas, mechanized agricultural fields, or fresh land being cleared and burned for farming.
Unfortunately, on Friday, the daytime temperature approached 107 Fahrenheit in the Cayo District, and that's when the Forest Department began noticing that several fires, which were previously extinguished, began to flare up, creating new fires. Those new fires began producing copious amounts of smoke which settled over the municipalities of Belmopan, San Ignacio, and Benque Viejo, during the evening time. Escape agricultural fires began spreading into the hills of the Vaca Forest Reserve, and that created a mounting emergency.
The authorities say that these fires are no longer agricultural fires. They've become wildfires that are burning in the forest and bushy areas surrounding these municipalities. Almost all of these fires were burning on private estates, except for the fire in the Vaca Forest Reserve. According to the Ministry of the Environment, the now-wild and uncontrolled nature of these fires, the absence of rain, and the high daytime temperatures, this situation is rapidly approaching the level of an emergency in the Cayo District.
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