‘The Earth is crying out for help’: as fires decimate South America, smoke shrouds its skies

Huge tracts of land have burned from largely man-made blazes in Ecuador, Paraguay, Peru, Brazil and other countries, with people suffocating from its fallout “Blue, our sky is forever blue!” effuses the official anthem of Rondônia, a UK-sized chunk of the Amazon in the western reaches of Brazil. But the “pure crystalline” heavens celebrated by those lyrics have vanished in recent months. Huge tracts of South America have been blanketed in smoke from largely man-made wildfires that are raging from Ecuador’s drought-stricken capital to Paraguay’s Chaco forest to the backlands of the greatest tropical jungle on Earth. Aerial view of heavy smoke from fires in the Amazon rainforest covering the city of Porto Velho on the banks of the Madeira River, Rondônia state, Brazil