Shamans fight Amazon blaze

Shamans fight Amazon blaze

BRASILIA (Reuters): Two shamans were called in Sunday to help fight the fires that have raged through the Amazon rain forest for two months and shown up Brazil's lack of readiness to combat such disasters by conventional means.

"They are going to hold a ceremony inside the Yanomami reservation," said Marcos Ferreira, an official at the government's Indian Foundation (Funai). "It is a ritual to repel the smoke and if possible, bring on rain."

Firefighters say only heavy rains can douse the fires, set by poor subsistence farmers, which have burned out of control in northern Roraima state and destroyed an area of highland savannah and virgin rain forest potentially as large as Lebanon.

The state government declared a state of calamity in January but its appeals for help from the federal government went largely ignored until the media and environmental pressure groups drew attention to the scope of the disaster in March.