The fire near one of the world’s most famous archaeological sites broke out on Tuesday, destroying around 100 hectares of land – the equivalent of around 50 football pitches. The fire, which Peru’s culture ministry said struck a remote area about six miles from the impressive high-altitude citadel, was reportedly started by farmers who had cleared the land to grow crops. “We have already been fighting the forest fire for two days and it has not been possible to bring it under control since the area is quite inaccessible,” Roberto Abarca, director of the risk management and security office in Cusco, told Reuters on Thursday. However, by Thursday night, Peruvian authorities said the fire had been 90 percent contained by dozens of firefighters and police. They claimed that Machu Picchu itself had not been affected. “Fortunately, it was possible to contain it [the fire]”, the mayor of the Machupicchu region, Darwin Baca León, told Peruvian radio station RPP. The mayor admitted that firefighters were still working to control some smaller outbreaks in the mountains that remained “active”. The fire comes as the South American tourist destination struggles to recover from the devastating effects of the coronavirus pandemic, which has claimed the lives of more than 200,000 Peruvian women. Peru’s tourism industry and Machu Picchu went into lockdown in early 2020 as Covid broke out around the world, claiming millions of lives and wreaking havoc on economies. On Thursday, Peru’s culture ministry insisted that tourism activities at Machu Picchu had not been affected by this week’s fire, and there were no reports of loss of life. Machu Picchu became world famous about a century ago after an American academic and explorer announced the “discovery” of a “lost city in the clouds”. Writing in the New York Times, Hiram Bingham said that the amazing stone work and abundance of stone dwellings led him to suspect that the Andean city “may prove to be the largest and most important ruin discovered in South America since the days of the Spanish conquest”. Bingham offered the name “Machu Picchu” for the area he had rediscovered and brought to world attention. However, a recent academic paper questioned whether this was actually the correct one. Its authors said the Unesco World Heritage site was actually known as Huayna Picchu, after a mountain peak above the ruins, or simply Picchu.
