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The wildfires in Toledo are still raging - burning down acres of farms and threatening homes. Right now, the communities of San Miguel, Silver Creek, and Hicattee are particularly at risk. And in those villages that have been fighting fires for weeks, the farmers are now without their main source of income.
Last time we were in San Pedro Columbia, the farmers pleaded to the government for assistance. And yesterday, the district was declared a disaster area. Today the PM told us that that decision was made to appeal for international assistance. He also added that they will be dipping into the contingency fund.
But he emphasized that this is the result of climate change, and to combat it, old farming practices will have to change.
John Briceno, Prime Minister
"I think the first thing we need to accept is that climate change is upon us, that how we did things ten, twenty years ago, we can no longer continue to do that. The issue of slash and burn has to be something of the past and now agriculture, we have to be using science and technology."
"What have we been doing? Well we've been doing a lot of work. I have to give credit to our ministers that they went immediately on the ground, not profiling but actually working there, looking at moving, mobilizing resources, it's all hands on deck with all the different ministries that can help, human development, MIDH, and that's where the [leader of the opposition] was wrong, MIDH has been on the ground. you have Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry, Sustainable Development, NEMO, so all of are on the ground. But at the same time we quickly realized that this was not just an ordinary fire like other times so we immediately declared is a national disaster area. By doing that we can access then access international assistance. We wrote to IDB, we wrote to CABEI and both of them already responded that they are going to assist us. We are using funds from the contingency fund in the budget, we have 5 million dollars aside for emergencies and this is an emergency so in Cabinet we agreed that we are going to be using a million dollars right now. And why a million? We know that's not enough but this is just to get things going immediately but we know that we have to be looking at food that many of our farmers up until Tuesday I don't think we had any houses burning down and if they did maybe one or two. But we know a lot of them, their milpas burnt down, their corn has burnt down so we are working with Human Development and Agriculture to see how what is the best way to be able to do something that is sustainable and long term. We want to provide them food for right now but at the same time we have to look at giving them seeds so that they could replant their crops and that is what the Ministry of Agriculture is working with."
Once Cabinet is able to produce a thorough plan to move forward, they will present a supplementary budget.
Astrum helicopters have also been deployed to assist the residents in the south.
