A fire that started Feb. 2 on La Negra high plain, 600 km southwest of the capital, consumed more than 1,000 hectares of vegetation, Yuri Bermúdez, commander of the local firefighting team, told Tierramérica. Even with the support of military helicopters, additional firefighters, soldiers and disaster workers, they were unable to contain the blaze that consumed vegetation from river beds, forested areas of Juan Pablo Peñaloza national park, and farmland.

Bermúdez said the unusually warm temperatures for this time of year likely helped ignite the inflammable waste left along the roads of the park by visitors.

Experts at the forestry sciences department at the University of the Andes consulted by Tierramérica refused to put forth hypotheses about the causes of the fire.