More than 50,000 people from nearly 200 nations are attending the COP30 gathering in Brazil.
BELÉM, Brazil — Delegates were evacuated from the COP30 climate summit after a fire broke out Thursday, complicating negotiations aimed at accelerating the global response to the Earth’s warming.
Firefighters and U.N. security officers controlled the fire in about six minutes, the Brazilian government said, adding that 13 people were treated on site for smoke inhalation. But the blaze forced at least an hourslong closure of the negotiating site on what was supposed to be the talks’ next-to-last day.
The fire broke out around 2 p.m. local time (noon EST) in the pavilion area that contains displays and meeting spaces for countries and groups attending the talks.
As a precaution, Brazil and the U.N. were closing the COP30 “blue zone” — the portion of the venue where diplomats and other delegates gather to conduct the summit’s official business — until at least 8 p.m. local time. The more corporate-friendly “green zone” remained open.
“Thank God the fire did not spread,” said Reginaldo Santos, a member of the summit’s technical support team. He said that “we were having a lecture in my booth, and we only heard the rush, everyone running, running, and then someone shouted, ‘It’s fire, it is fire, fire.’”
Italian climate envoy Francesco Corvaro said he was in a meeting in his country’s pavilion, just next to where the fire broke out, when “I started to see lots of people running.”
At first, “I thought maybe Lula was arriving in the area,” Corvaro said, referring to Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. “Then I saw the fire. It spread very, very quickly in the corridor near our pavilion, all the way to the ceiling.”
Thousands of people spilled out onto the streets near the Hangar Convention and Fair Centre of the Amazon in Belém, the port city where Brazil is hosting the talks. Smoke could be seen rising from the giant white tent where the discussions are occurring.
It was not immediately clear what impact the interruption will have on the negotiations, which have included discussions about accelerating the world’s turn away from fossil fuels and tripling the amount of climate assistance that rich countries would provide to poorer nations. The U.S., which is not attending the talks, is expected to abstain from both efforts.
The talks have drawn more than 50,000 people from nearly 200 countries.
Zia Weise contributed to this report from Belém.