The firefighting teams, with brigades from different parts of the country, continued with the tasks to extinguish the flames that for several days have affected the islands of the Paraná Delta, whose smoke impacts the provinces of Entre Ríos, Santa Fe and Buenos Aires, while the authorities ordered the arrest of a fourth person for starting fires in the wetland.
The fire fighting teams, coordinated by the National Fire Management Service (SNMF), with a logistics base in San Pedro, began a new day of work on Tuesday in which they were deployed “three hydrant planes, three helicopters with buckets, an observer plane and three helicopters for transferring personnel” (two of which belong to the Ministry of Defense and one to the province of Buenos Aires).
“More than one hundred brigade members and support personnel affected by firefighting, belonging to the National South and Center Brigade, National Parks and the Province of Buenos Aires” were also summoned, the SNMF specified, and remarked that in San Pedro there is “in functions the Emergency Command Truck (COE)”.
This Tuesday morning, inhabitants of the city of Buenos Aires and the suburbs of Buenos Aires reported an “intense smell of smoke”, a situation that the National Meteorological Service (SMN) confirmed is the product of the forest fires that persist in the delta islands of the Parana River.
SATELLITE?️ | This morning you see #smoke on the Litoral and Pampean region due to ? fires in the Paraná delta. There are reports of burning smell in Buenos Aires, Entre Ríos and Santa Fe. ⚠️The situation will continue at least until tomorrow. pic.twitter.com/xIVBCH7nJm
– SMN Argentina (@SMN_Argentina) August 16, 2022
Meanwhile, the agency specified that the smoke also affects several towns in Entre Ríos and Santa Fe since the winds that predominate in a north and northwest direction, a situation that will change only on Wednesday when they begin to blow from the southern sector.
“This morning smoke is observed over the coast and the Pampas region due to fires in the Paraná delta, there are reports of a burning smell in Buenos Aires, Entre Ríos and Santa Fe, and the situation will continue at least until tomorrow,” the SMN reported. through his official Twitter account.
Regarding the smoke that affects the central region and part of northern Argentina on Tuesday, the agency’s meteorologist Cindy Fernández informed Télam that the concentration in the area is due to the fact that “North and northwest winds predominate and cause the concentration of smoke in the coastal area to move towards the province of Buenos Aires and surroundings.”
“The concentration of smoke affects a large part of the province of Buenos Aires, Santa Fe, Entre Ríos, Córdoba, Santiago del Estero and part of Chaco and Formosa, and will continue all day today until tomorrow with the entry of a cold front. , with a southerly direction that will displace the concentration of smoke towards the north,” Fernández explained.
While, another man was arrested in the last hours for starting a fire on the islands of the Paraná Deltafor which there are already four people arrested for this crime in the jurisdiction of the province of Entre Ríos, confirmed the secretary of Civil Protection of Santa Fe, Roberto Rioja.
The four arrested, three from the Santa Fe city of Villa Constitución and one from Victoria, Entre Ríos, remain at the disposal of the Federal Court of that town, in charge of Federico Martín.
On Monday “the Albatros Group, while doing work together with the Prefecture, detected some columns of smoke, went down, walked and were able to grab a person who was starting a second fire, who was from Victoria,” Rioja said in dialogue with the news channel TN.
“Let’s wait to see what news we have” this Tuesday, said the secretary, and stressed that the arrests “are something that we have been waiting for.”
The first three were arrested on Sunday after being found trying to set a fire in an area of the islands of the Paraná River Deltain front of the Santa Fe town of Arroyo Seco and remain in the Penal Unit of the Entre Ríos city of Victoria.
For his part, the Minister of Environment and Sustainable Development, Juan Cabandié, stated that “it would be a forceful measure and, at some point, a form of discipline” for the Justice to summon the owners of the fields where it is presumed that grasslands are burned in the area of the islands of the Paraná River, considering that this action would serve to “discourage the outbreaks” that have been repeated in said wetland and that have already affected thousands of hectares.
This is how a person started a fire in the Paraná Delta.
These images were captured by the monitoring system of @AmbienteNacion that we installed in the area and are part of the information that we are going to present today in the Justice of Entre Ríos. pic.twitter.com/SR3JdjeZAN– Juan Cabandié (@juancabandie) August 9, 2022
The official insisted that the province of “Entre Ríos must deliver the cadastres to prosecutor Claudio Kishimoto and Judge Federico Martín” in order to move forward with the legal cases for the forest fires in fields in the area of the Paraná river delta, where he reiterated that some they are owned by “known persons”.
“We need to cross information that we bring to the Justice, the geolocation of the fires and the owners of these fields,” said the minister in statements by Radio Nacional Folklorica.
And he asked that Justice summon their owners: “The truth is that it would be a forceful measure and at some point it would be a form of discipline, to discourage the outbreaks. If justice acted and summoned these people, without a doubt that the owners of the fields or those who do it by getting into fields that do not they are theirs, they would think twice”he concluded.
Entre Ríos installed a new operations command
The governor of Entre Ríos, Gustavo Bordet, confirmed on Tuesday that a new operations command was installed in the city of Victoria in Entre Ríos to collaborate in the extinction of the flames that have affected the islands of the Paraná Delta for several days.
The new point of operations will mainly deal with fires and works near the route 174joins three other combat commands, located in the Buenos Aires towns of San Nicolás and San Pedro and in the Santa Fe town of Alvear.
In this framework, Bordet highlighted the brigadistas who “they work all day to contain fires” that they are intentional, but where “there has been no rain for two months, everything is very dry, the river is low and this is getting worse.”
The provincial president also remarked that Entre Ríos, together with the Federal Justice, is “severely punishing those who provoke them.”
“We are acting with the Provincial Police, with the federal judge of Victoria, who is the one who gives the possibility for the police to carry out the proceedings, working with everything we have,” he said.
Bordet explained that in addition to the personnel, the province’s two helicopters are available “all day long”; all the volunteer fire departments in the area and the “collaboration and support of the national government and brigade members” from other provinces.
He also valued the Entre Ríos Police who “worked tirelessly to be able to mitigate the effects, first of all the burnings”, and now is dedicated to “stop those who intentionally set fire”.
“We will continue working so that those who are causing this damage, which affects transitability, people’s health, our nature and our ecological system, have the punishment they deserve,” concluded the Entre Ríos governor.
