Havana/There are already around 460 hectares of forest destroyed by the flames In Pinar del Ríothat last four days and that, far from suffocating, multiply. If there were five spotlights yesterday in the province, this Tuesday, The official press reportsthere are seven active fires between the center and the west of the province. The “climatic conditions,” authorities say about strong wind gusts that prevent extinction, remain “very complex.”
The most serious began on Friday night in the forested area of La Vigía, in the Tobaca Municipality of San Juan y Martínez, and reaches the San Simón de las Blacks area today. Other affected locations are mines of Matahambre, Mantua, Guane, consolation of the south and return.
The head of the body of rangers of the latter municipality, Alexander Pereda Burón, told the newspaper Guerrilla that have had to use “forces from all municipalities to face this situation.” The military also explained that the most difficult is being the wind, with gusts of up to 45 kilometers per hour “that cause the fire to cross on occasions when we perform the technical measures.”
In the first quarter of the year, there were 13 fires more than in the same period of the previous year and 400 hectares more affectation
The area suffers from an intense drought – more than 90 days without rains – that has caused, Pereda Burón continues, which “almost daily” has “seven to eight forest fires”, but these “could have been controlled with relative speed.” The situation, says, “was complicated from last Friday.”
In spite of everything, the authorities ensure that the fire has not reached homes or tobacco plantations. On the contrary, the mass of young pines is the one that has suffered the most damage, together with the fauna of the place.
The figures of similar accidents so far from 2025 accounts for the panorama: in the first quarter of the year, there were 13 fires more than in the same period of the previous year and 400 more hectares of affectation.
The Interior Ministry communicated on Monday that this is one of the 201 fires reported in the country since the beginning of the year, of which 12 are currently active, most of them in the west of the island.
Just last month, another fire in the same municipality destroyed hundreds of hectares of pine During the several days he was active.
The most critical period for forest fires in Cuba covers from January to May, which coincides with the dry season. In 2024, at the end of the Forest Fire Protection Campaign, the ranger body reported 326 accidents, which affected a total of almost 3,000 hectares of forests.
