Colombia Repurposes Crop-Spray Planes to Tackle Wildfires

Colombia has added eight aircraft, half of which were planes originally used to fumigate drug crops, to its fire-fighting fleet in a move to prepare the country for more of the dry El Niño weather that has brought about significant wildfires.

Colombian president Gustavo Petro attended an event in Tolima province displaying the four AT-802 Air Tractor planes and four Black Hawk UH-60 helicopters, originally given to Colombia by the US, that had been repurposed to drop water and chemicals to put out wildfire.

The planes were previously employed to spray the herbicide glyphosate on illegal plantations of coca, the main ingredient in cocaine, until 2015 when the planes were grounded due to health concerns related to the chemical.

Planes will help fight major wildfires in Colombia

At the end of January this year, Petro declared that wildfires burning in the country were a natural disaster, and freed up funds to fight the blazes amid soaring temperatures and the El Niño weather phenomenon.

Colombia, the world’s second-most biodiverse country, put out more than 200 fires in January alone – around eight per day, according to a report from the environment ministry and the disaster agency.

Almost half of the two trillion peso budget (508 million dollars) for addressing issues caused by El Niño, like fighting fires, had been spent by the end of January, the report stated. At the time President Petro told journalists in the country’s Cauca province that declaring a natural disaster “means some budget items can be moved to other areas to address problems that arise, such as transferring resources so that helicopters can be put into action to put out the fires.”