Colombia declared a disaster situation on Thursday due to wildfires raging across several parts of the country, as the president warned the conditions could get worse. <\/p>\n
Colombia\u2019s President Gustavo Petro declared a \u201csituation of disaster and calamity,\u201d telling reporters that funds previously approved for other purposes are being redirected to deal with the crisis. <\/p>\n
The government is also seeking international help, he said, adding that the United States, Chile, Peru and Canada, \u201cwhich has enormous experience [fighting fires],\u201d have responded to the call. Petro said he\u2019s also seeking the cooperation of the United Nations and the European Union. <\/p>\n
The fires are the result of hot and dry conditions linked to the El Ni\u00f1o weather phenomenon, according to officials. El Ni\u00f1o is expected to continue for the next few months before ending during the Northern Hemisphere spring. <\/p>\n
Petro warned that the situation, which he described as a \u201cclimate crisis,\u201d will get worse. \u201cWe are going toward an increasingly difficult stage,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
Temperatures across much of the country have been 5 to 10 degrees Celsius above normal in recent days and weeks.\u00a0Many locations are in the mid to even upper 30s C (upper 90s to low 100s F) and are coming on the heels of above-average temperatures across the region in recent months. <\/p>\n
At least 25 active fires were reported on Thursday by the National Disaster Risk Management Unit. Ten are under control and 217 have been extinguished, the agency said. <\/p>\n
Billowing smoke has overwhelmed some areas in the country and led to flights being cancelled in the capital Bogota. <\/p>\n
The city\u2019s El Dorado airport operated with restrictions Thursday morning due to low visibility from smoke and fog. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe estimate that the phenomenon is composed of 70% fog and 30% smoke,\u201d the\u00a0Civil Aviation Authority of\u00a0Colombia\u00a0said on X. <\/p>\n
At least 138 flights were affected, 48 were canceled and 16 were rerouted to other airports, the authority reported. <\/p>\n\n
Colombia declared a disaster situation on Thursday due to wildfires raging across several parts of the country, as the president warned the conditions could get worse. Colombia\u2019s President Gustavo Petro declared a \u201csituation of disaster and calamity,\u201d telling reporters that funds previously approved for other purposes are being redirected to deal with the crisis. The <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":14618,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-14616","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14616","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14616"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14616\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14618"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14616"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14616"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14616"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}