Bracing for a perfect firestorm

Firefighters working to contain blazes in the mountains near Bogota, Colombia in January this year. Fires have also burned in Colombia’s patch of the Amazon. — ©2024 The New York Times Company

BY this time of the year, rain should be drenching large swaths of the Amazon rainforest. Instead, a punishing drought has kept the rains at bay, creating dry conditions for fires that have engulfed hundreds of square kilometres of the rainforest that do not usually burn.

The fires have turned the end of the dry season in the northern part of the giant rainforest into a crisis. Firefighters have struggled to contain enormous blazes that have sent choking smoke into cities across South America.