Colombia, a generally wet nation, is ravaged by widespread forest fires

Helicopters carrying buckets of water are flying to the mountains where fires are burning, a thick haze periodically blankets the sky and residents have been ordered to wear masks and limit driving because of poor air quality.

For a week, firefighters have been battling fires in the mountains around Bogotá, Colombia's capital, as dozens of other blazes have burned across the country. According to officials, this is the warmest January in thirty years.

The president has declared a national disaster and asked for international help to fight the fires, which he said could extend beyond the Andes mountains and erupt on the Pacific coast and in the Amazon.

The fires in Colombia this month are unusual in a country where people are more accustomed to torrential rains and mudslides than fire and ash. They are attributed to high temperatures and droughts, exacerbated by the climate phenomenon known as El Niño.

Ricardo Lozano, a geologist and former Colombian environment minister, said El Niño is a natural phenomenon that occurs cyclically, but that with climate change “these events are becoming increasingly intense and extreme.”

This month brought record temperatures to Colombia, among other places 111 degrees Fahrenheit in Hondaa colonial city between the cities of Medellín and Bogotá. It has dried out forests, savannas and normally moist highlands known as páramos, turning parts of the country into a tinderbox.

As dozens of fires have burned, more than 100 square miles have been scorched, and as temperatures continue to rise, officials say more fires are likely before the rainy season begins in April.

Fires have also broken out in neighboring countries Venezuela and Ecuador, including in an ecological domain.

Across Colombia, volunteer fire crews in many places say they are being outnumbered by fires fanned by heat and wind.

“One of the hardest things is finishing a shift and turning around to look at the mountains, only to see even more hotspots,” said Santiago Botello, risk management coordinator for Bogotá's volunteer firefighters. The volunteers, he said, make up about a quarter of the roughly 600 firefighters who have been battling blazes in the mountains above the city of nearly eight million people.

“It's physically exhausting,” Mr. Botello said, adding: “It's obviously not common to see something like that in Bogotá.”

Three fires in the mountains along one side of Bogotá, known as the Cerros Orientales, sent plumes of smoke pouring over the city last week, grounding dozens of flights and forcing the evacuation of some schools and buildings.

The mayor, Carlos Fernando Galán, declared late on Sunday that the fires in Bogotá were officially under control, although they had not yet been completely extinguished, and new fires were reported on Monday both in the city and in Sopó, a town on the edge of the city.

Helicopters continued to hover over Bogotá. Some were Black Hawk helicopters donated by the United States in 2022 renamed 'Guacamayas' by the Colombian government or macaws, indicating their new role in fighting fires, rather than just the decades-long drug war.

While helicopters ferried water to the hotspots, hiking trails, which typically draw tourists with their lush forests, mountain streams and panoramic views, remained closed.

Eduardo Campos, a biologist offering company walks in the mountainssaid a carpet of leaves left behind by non-native species, including pine and eucalyptus, had dried out during El Niño and fueled the flames.

The damage was extensive, Mr Campos said. Poor farmers living in the mountains were displaced; animals, including birds, mammals and small snakes, had been burned; and parts of the forest were decimated.

“It will take years for the forest to recover,” he said.

Susana Muhamad, Colombia's Environment Minister, said Friday that 95 percent of fires across the country are started by humans and not by natural causes such as lightning – either accidentally, during the burning of waste or clearing the land for agriculture , or with criminal intent. This week, 26 people had been arrested.

The fires killed at least one person, a 74-year-old man in La Capilla, a small town about 70 miles northeast of Bogotá. Authorities said his body was found in his home after a fire was extinguished there.

The fires have been especially devastating to the high-mountain tropical highlands known as páramos, where rare plants occur, called fragilejones and are crucial for the water supply of the urban population.

Hernán Morantes, an environmental lawyer and advocate for the Páramo of Santurbán, a nature reserve 300 miles northeast of Bogotá, said there had been fires in the area before, “but never on the scale of this one.”

The Colombian government is asking people to report fires using the hashtag “El Niño is not a game.”

In seeking international assistance, including from the United Nations, President Gustavo Petro said this weekend: “The emergency caused by global warming, combined with the El Niño phenomenon, has necessitated action on several fronts. One of them has to do with heat waves and human health. Another one with the forest fires. Another with the pressure on the water supply.”

Brazil, Canada and Peru have pledged to send aid to Colombia, the government said.

Mr Petro said countries in the region should prepare to tackle what could be a “planetary emergency in the Amazon rainforest”.

In recent years, fires in Brazil have destroyed large parts of the rainforest.

Mr Petro has made tackling climate change a core part of his agenda, including reducing deforestation and phasing out the country's fossil fuel exports. While some in Colombia have applauded the president's emphasis on the link between this month's fires and climate change, others have criticized him for not taking concrete steps to prepare.

Mr Morantes, the lawyer and advocate, said there have been recent cuts to fire departments and a lack of planning had hampered the country's ability to respond to the fires, a claim echoed by officials previously involved in disaster response.

“We should have already had all the instruments for international cooperation ready, planes, everything,” he said. “The problem is that the country is not ready for it. It's clearly not ready yet.”

In response to the claims, Colombia's Environment Ministry said in a statement on Monday that it had been planning for El Niño for months, citing as an example the aerial response now underway.

The ministry said more than $2 billion had been allocated for fire preparation and response, and a community network had been established for prevention and communication.

“This situation is not a surprising series of fires,” the statement said. “It is the El Niño phenomenon in combination with the climate crisis that has led to extremely dry conditions. Let us add to this the hand of man who, intentionally or accidentally, caused the fires.”

Federico Rios reporting contributed