Brazil Seeks Copters to Fight Fires
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BOA VISTA, Brazil — Firefighters dug ditches in a bid to halt raging fires in the northern Amazon on Sunday as officials appealed for help and sorely needed water-dropping helicopters.
“We lost control of this thing a long time ago,” fire brigade Capt. Kleber Gomes Cerquinho said as soldiers on a bulldozer carved a firebreak in the jungle.
Fires set by subsistence farmers in the state of Roraima have burned out of control for two months, destroying a vast swath of savannah near the border with Venezuela.
Officials say 2.2 million acres of farmland have gone up in smoke, while an unusually severe drought has killed about 20,000 head of cattle.
Now the flames are eating into remote rain forest areas that are normally too wet to burn.
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