A continent ablaze: South America surpasses record for fires

By Jake Spring and Stefanie Eschenbacher – Reuters

South America is being ravaged by fire from Brazil’s Amazon rainforest through the world’s largest wetlands to dry forests in Bolivia, breaking a previous record for the number of blazes seen in a year up to Sept. 11.

Satellite data analyzed by Brazil’s space research agency Inpe has registered 346,112 fire hotspots so far this year in all 13 countries of South America, topping the earlier 2007 record of 345,322 hotspots in a data series that goes back to 1998.