Brazil’s Modernist Capital Chokes on Wildfire Smoke

AFP/APP

Brasília: Brasília’s iconic futuristic buildings, designed by architect Oscar Niemeyer, have been engulfed in a thick haze of smoke in recent days. Several parts of Brazil are suffocating due to raging wildfires, but the fumes are new to the modernist capital, whose residents are accustomed to expansive blue skies and clean air during the dry season.

“I have lived in Brasília for 30 years; this is the first time I have seen this kind of smoke,” said Moacir do Nascimento Santo, 47, a driver with two young children. “(It) compromises our breathing, our vision, and it is worrying for the children—they suffer with all this smoke,” he told AFP.

Situated in the center of the country, Brasília was carefully planned from scratch on an empty plateau to become the capital in 1960 and is now home to 2.8 million people. Its wide avenues, organized neighborhoods, and green, open spaces are a world apart from other Brazilian cities such as Rio de Janeiro or São Paulo, and much less polluted.

Forest fires have been raging for several weeks in Brazil, particularly in the Amazon rainforest in the north and the immense Pantanal wetland in the center-west of the country.

The smoke engulfing Brasília is a result of fires near the capital, but also winds bringing in smoke from other regions, particularly the southeastern state of São Paulo, several hundred kilometers away, where bushfires devastated thousands of hectares of agricultural land last week. Authorities say most fires are human-caused.

‘At War Against Fire’

Many residents of Brasília have resorted to using protective masks when venturing outside. “This time of year is usually dry, but this is the first time I’ve seen the cloud of smoke,” said Isaac Tomas, a civil servant in the Chamber of Deputies. “It’s very worrying. I already have problems with rhinitis during the drought, but now, with the smoke, it’s even worse.”