Protests erupt in Brazil over devastating fires

Protesters, environmental activists took to the streets of Rio de Janeiro and Brasilia to demand action against the fires ravaging Brazil.

The protests occurred days after the government announced that it will allocate an extra budget of $93.7 million to address the crisis.

The government said to be discussing stricter punishments against those who commit arson in the country, which has been pointed out as one of the causes of the increase in fires this year.

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.

The greatest number of fires this month is in Brazil and Bolivia, followed by Peru, Argentina and Paraguay, according to Inpe data.

Brigades of firefighters were permanently deployed at the Xingu Indigenous Park, central Brazil, to protect straw-built communities from the flames, a brigade coordinator said.

Firefighters and brigades worked to combat the flames ravaging the Xingu Indigenous Park, in Mato Grosso state, which hosts 25 communities.

Brigade members threw water on the straw-built houses to prevent them from catching fire.

According to media reports, the fire has consumed 40,000 hectares of the indigenous land in the Brazilian Amazon.

Earlier this year in May, Brazil also experienced once-in-a-century flooding in the state of Rio Grande do Sul which left more than 170 people dead and displaced more than half a million people from their homes.