It is doing this for a century. By now, it has evaporated whole lagoons and kindled forest fires, killed off fish and crops, stranded boats and the villagers who travel by them, brought disease and wreaked economic havoc. The demon is the drought that has been grappling the world’s largest rain forest, the Amazon River basin, not for years, but a century. The “state of public calamity,” remains in effect as the drought’s impact on the economy, public health and food and fuel supplies deepens.
The Brazilian Armed Forces have for three months mounted the biggest relief operation, with hundreds of riverside settlements cut off from the outside world. They, along with the civil defense agencies have carried out the relief operation together. It is just in Amazonas State; — the region’s largest, that nearly 2,000 tons of food and 30 tons of medicine have already been airlifted by plane and helicopter to help the affected communities.
Via: New York Times