Lightning strikes in the Chubut Region of Argentina started fires that have raged on for a week. The fire broke out after a lightning strike in the Tigre River valley some 40 km (25 mi.) from the town of Cholila. Already over 10,000 hectares (25,000 acres) have been burned to these fires and with high temperatures in the region there doesn’t seem to be an end in sight to these fires as they continue to jump the fire breaks that are meant to contain the fires. The chief of operations for the 120 firefighters remarked that the fires, at present, are out of control. Government officials are flying out to the area to set up a crisis cabinet there in order to help facilitate the fighting of the fires.
NASA’s Aqua satellite collected this natural-color image with the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer, MODIS, instrument on February 23, 2015. Actively burning areas, detected by MODIS’s thermal bands, are outlined in red.
NASA image courtesy Jeff Schmaltz LANCE/EOSDIS MODIS Rapid Response Team, GSFC. Caption by Lynn Jenner