The Guadalajara metropolitan area was blanketed in smoke Sunday, April 2 after a fire consumed a large part of the Cerro del Tepopote, an undeveloped hillside bordering the Primavera Forest in Zapopan.
Some 200 firefighters from several agencies were drafted in to control the blaze, which broke out around 2 p.m. on Sunday. They eventually succeeded in their task about 14 hours later.
The prevailing winds caused the blaze to spread rapidly throughout the hillside, comprised mainly of shrubbery and young trees, at one point even threatening the town of Venta del Astillero on the Tepic highway, located ten miles west of the city beltway (periferico).
Three helicopters were mobilized to drop hundreds of gallons of water on the flames in a bid to prevent the fire from spreading.
As the smoke thickened and began to drift over the Zapopan suburbs, authorities issued an air quality warning, urging citizens to remain indoors, if possible. School classes in Venta del Astillero and the pueblo of La Primavera were suspended on Monday, even though the blaze was under control by then.
In total, around 800 hectares of the hillside were affected by the blaze. A previous fire in 2014 consumed around half that amount.
Jalisco Governor Aristoteles Sandoval praised the firefighters who battled throughout the night to extinguish the flames. He later urged citizens to exercise extreme caution in the current dry season, noting that “98 percent” of forest fires are caused by humans, either through oversight or intentionally provoked.
Sandoval also issued a warning that forest fires could be especially aggressive during this year’s hot season, which runs from April to June.
On Tuesday, Zapopan Mayor Pablo Lemus announced that investigations into the cause of the fire indicated that it was set deliberately. He said various burned out tires, along with rags that had been soaked in gasoline, had been discovered on the Tepopote hillside, almost certainly confirming foul play.
Lemus also announced that in the wake of the fire the municipality will be applying for a 20-year moratorium on any urban development on the Cerro de Tepopote. Plans for a subdivision and a block of apartments had been submitted to Zapopan by private individuals during the previous administration, Lemus said, but planning permission had not been granted.
Lemus revealed that pressure has been applied from real estate developers hoping to urbanize Cerro de Tepopote, which environmentalists consider part of a “buffer zone” between the city and the Primavera Forest, a federally protected nature reserve. While Tepopote itself is not considered part of the federal reserve, this latest fire could renew calls to have it included within the Primavera’s limits.
Later this week, it was revealed that half of the Cerro de Tepopote (around 500 hectares) had been purchased by the State Workers Pension Fund (Ipejal) in 2012, for 130 pesos a square meter. Ipejal’s president said there were never plans to develop the hillside, although he failed to answer the question as to why this decentralized government agency invested in land that was not going to provide any return for state workers. Ipejal has ploughed money into several other real estate projects in Jalisco in recent years, including Chalacatepec in the Costalegre, a controversial development on a pristine, unspoiled section of Pacific Coast.