Emergency Amazon Fires Taskforce Created
3/27/98
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Title: Emergency Amazon Fires Taskforce Created
Source: Reuters
Status: Copyrighted, contact source to reprint
Date: 3/27/98
Byline: William Schomberg
BRASILIA, March 27 (Reuters) - Brazil assembled an emergency taskforce on
Friday in an effort to improve firefighting efforts in the Amazon amid
growing criticism of its reaction to huge forest and savannah fires.
Bolstered by a $5 million loan from the World Bank, officials said the new
inter-ministerial team would also speed up handling of further offers of
international aid.
``We are setting up the group to speed the operation as a whole. It's still
bureaucratic at this stage,'' said a spokeswoman for the Regional Affairs
Secretariat in Brasilia.
Also on Friday, the United Nations said it was sending expert teams to Brazil,
and to Indonesia where fires are also raging, to assess the need for aid in
both countries. Fires set by poor subsistence farmers have burned out of
control for more than two months in Brazil's northern Roraima state, on the
border with Venezuela.
In Boa Vista, the state capital, hospitals struggled to cope with growing
numbers of patients suffering from respiratory complaints as thick smoke
blanketed the town.
``Yesterday was the worst day we've seen so far,'' a local government spokesman
said.
But an Argentine fire official involved in Brazil's biggest ever firefighting
operation said the increased smoke levels were a sign some fires had been put
out and were smoldering.
``I am optimistic,'' Noe Carvallo said by telephone. ``Within 20 days the fire
we can expect the fires to be under control, although not completely out.''
According to a latest official estimate for the damage, about 3,500 square
miles (9,000 square km) of grasslands and rainforest -- an area nearly as big
as Lebanon -- have been destroyed.
Officials saay an area larger than Belgium is at risk from the flames,
including the rainforest reservation of the primitive Yanomami Indians. Fires
have also been reported across the border in Venezuela and in Guyana.
Some 500 Brazilian soldiers were expected to join the firefighting effort in
the next few days, taking the total number of people fighting the flames to
about 1,500, including Argentine and Venezuelan firemen.
Brazil's media criticized the government's handling of the crisis, and
in particular resistance within the armed forces to the U.N. offer of help.
``Until now, the nation has been forced to watch the fires grow without an
energetic reaction from the government,'' the newspaper Jornal do Brasil said
in an editorial.
``The nationalist reaction of the military men who want to fight the flames
on their own is bizarre to say the least,'' the newspaper said.
Brazil's armed forces view the Amazon as a national security issue and are
sensitive to the prospect of outside interference in the remote, Western
Europe-sized rainforest.
International environmental group Friends of the Earth, which has accused
Brazil of dragging its feet over offers of international help, welcomed
Thursday's announcement that aid would be accepted.
``The decision came late but is still very positive,'' said the group's
coordinator for Brazil, Roberto Smeraldi. ``If they had accepted it a month
ago, the situation would not be as bad as it is now.''
Brazil's President Fernando Henrique Cardoso got involved with the crisis for
the first time on Thursday when he met with the heads of the armed forces and
other ministers.
A spokesman said after the meeting that Russia was ready to send two
water-carrying planes to Roraima to help put out the flames but technical
problems were delaying their arrival. Cardoso may also travel to the region
soon, the spokesman said.
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