Friday, December 30, 2011

Fire destroys 1,500 hectares of Patagonia forest

Terra Daily via AFP: A fire has destroyed or seriously damaged 1,500 hectares (3,700 acres) of vegetation in a Patagonia nature preserve in southern Chile, forcing the evacuation of 400 people, officials said Thursday.

"We are facing an extremely dangerous and complex fire as we have experienced very hostile climate conditions so far and forecasts say it will stay that way" on Friday, Interior Minister Rodrigo Hinzpeter said.

"The topography is hindering the efforts of rescue workers to reach the area and fight the fire, while the vegetation remains highly combustible."

He said the conditions made it "impossible" to estimate how long it would take to control the blaze....

Looking Towards Torres Del Paine, Chile - Photographers Comment: "The blue colour-cast is real. It's just the colour of the light down there." Shot by Winky, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr (which considers this one of its finest images, and rightly so), under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license

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