Amazon fire plunges Sao Paulo into darkness as smoke from rainforest blazes blocks out sunlight in Brazil’s largest city

AMAZON wildfires plunged Sao Paulo into darkness in the middle of the afternoon as a massive wall of smoke from the burning rainforest covered Brazil’s largest city.

A record number of fires have started this year, according to Brazil’s space research agency and are responsible for causing a daytime blackout in the city, thousands of miles away.

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The smoke was so thick and widespread it was picked up by satellite images released by NASA last week.

The state of Amazonas has declared a state of emergency due to the fires.

Sao Paulo was plunged into darkness at around 3pm on Monday which lasted for around an hour, the local paper Folha de S Paulo reported.

Videos and pictures posted on social media showed cars driving with their headlights on as if it was night time even though it was mid-afternoon.

Strong winds carried thick plumes of smoke more than 1,700 miles to the city which met cold, humid air from the coast, experts said, which triggered the blackout.

By Tuesday, the dark smoke coming from the world’s largest tropical rainforest had moved to Brazil’s Atlantic coast, the World Meteorological Organisation said.

Josélia Pegorim, Climatempo meteorologist, told Globo: “The smoke did not come from fires from the state of São Paulo, but from very dense and wide fires that have been going on for several days in Rondônia and Bolivia. The cold front changed the direction of the winds and transported this smoke to São Paulo.”

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The Amazon rainforest has suffered a record number of fires this year, according to The National Institute for Space Research (INPE).

The agency said its satellite data detected more than 72,000 fires since January, an 84 per cent increase over the same period of 2018.

It added that most fires were in the Amazon region.

Wildfires in the country are thought to often occur in the dry season but conservationists have also pointed to fires started deliberately in efforts to illegally deforest the land for cattle ranching.

Ricardo Mello, head of the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) Amazon Programme, said the fires were “a consequence of the increase in deforestation seen in recent figures”.

Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro, who sacked the head of INPE over a row about its deforestation figures, has come under fire from conservationists, saying he has encouraged loggers and farmers to clear the land.

However, Mr Bolsonaro has rejected that criticism, saying it was the “season of the queimada”, when farmers use fire to clear land.

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