Argentine firefighters are battling an "out of control" fire in Los Alerces National Park, Patagonia, on Saturday, which has already devastated nearly 600 hectares of this UNESCO World Heritage site, the agency reported. official press Telam.
In the heart of the southern summer, record temperatures of more than 40°C are these days hitting Argentine Patagonia, a usually cold and windy desert region in the far south of the country.
Brigadiers and personnel from Chubut province were trying to prevent the flames from reaching the neighboring towns of Esquel and Trevelin, about 2,000 km southwest of Buenos Aires.
The fire, located in the Centinela Creek area, near Rosales Bay, broke out Thursday evening and has already burned more than 577 hectares of forest, exceeding the perimeter of the park, according to the same source.
It “is out of control,” said Mario Cardenas, head of the fire, communications and emergency (ICE) department at the national park, which was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2017. The conditions “are unfavorable because we have still a lot of wind and high temperatures.
This makes our job very difficult.
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State of emergency until April
On its Instagram account, the Los Alerces National Park indicated that on Friday evening, a drone flew over the area to assess the progress of the fire, and that fire teams from Esquel and Trevelin “are present to protect the towns close to the fire.
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Record temperatures in Argentine Patagonia have led the provinces of Chubut and Rio Negro to declare a state of emergency due to the risk of fires until April.
Los Alerces Park covers 188,379 hectares with a buffer zone of approximately 207,313 hectares.
Successive glaciations have shaped the region's landscape and created a variety of spectacular forms, glacial cirques, strings of ponds, clear-water lakes, hanging valleys, roches montagne and U-shaped valleys. It is home to some of the last patches of Patagonian forest in one piece as well as numerous endemic and threatened species of fauna and flora, including the oldest population of alerces or Patagonian cypress, a conifer endemic to South America.