BOGOTA, Colombia – With temperatures of up to 48 Celsius degrees, a town of the Colombian coffee cultivation axis was baptized as “El infiernito” by the prevailing excess of heat, unusual meteorological conditions and that submit the human organism to extreme phenomena, with perjudicial effects.
This is a town of the Arauca, in the department of Caldas, where the thermometers registered 15 Celsius degrees over the current values, which do not exceed 33 degrees.
“The shame turns out unbearable, they tell us that we should save water for the dry period but we have to take bath several times a day, we live through a hell,” mentioned one of the neighbors of this establishment placed in the Andean region inside the called coffee triangle to the press.
According to experts, the human body is prepared to support temperatures of up to 43 grades, to be supported at a suitable vitality level.
The nearby department of Tolima, dedicated also to the cultivation of the coffee tree, is other of the places punished by the heatwave, which flogs the same way this capital known popularly like “the icebox”, due to its low temperatures combined with intermittent drizzles.
In here, the thermometers marked 23 Celsius degrees, that is to say, 10 more than the habitual average.
The predominant drought sharpened by the influence of the climatological event El Nino or Oscillation of the South, is one of the causes of the forest fires proliferation in the Colombian territory, which devastated during 2015 approximately 100 thousand covered hectares of forests, cultivation and pastures; in what goes of the 2016, they devastated almost 10,000.
The reservoirs of the country, decisive for the generation of electricity, are below 50 percent of its capacity of filling due to the scarcity of precipitations.
