According to Chile’s deputy minister of cultural heritage, the number of huge structures affected has yet to be determined.
Easter Island is home to about 1,000 of these megaliths, known as moai, which average 4 meters high and were carved by a Polynesian tribe over 500 years ago.
The fire that broke out on Monday enthusiastic “Close from 60 hectares“as Carolina Pérez Dattari, Deputy Minister of Cultural Heritage of the Ministry of Culture, Arts and Heritage, tweeted.
The fire broke out around the Rano Raraku volcano on Easter Island, which is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Easter Island or Rapa Nui, dependent on tourism, is a strip of about 100 square meters. km in the Pacific Ocean, more than 2000 km from mainland Chile.
It reopened just three months ago after a sanitary closure due to the Covid-19 pandemic, but was closed again for a conservation panel to examine the extent of the damage.
historical figures
The mayor of the island, Pedro Edmunds, told local media that the damage caused by the fire “not repairable“.
“All fires, at least the ones I know about in Rapa Nui in my six decades of life, are caused by people,” Edmunds said in an interview with the Chilean station Radio Pauta.
Ariki Tepano, director of the Mau Henua community that manages and cares for the national park, called the damage to the affected statues “irreparable”.
“The moai were completely charred and you can see how the fire affected them,” Tepano said on the park’s official social media pages.
The largest of the carved stone figures weighs about 74 tons and 10 meters high.
The figures were carved by the Rapanui Indians sometime between the 1400s and 1650s and placed to form a ring around the island facing inland.
Best known for their deep-set eyes and long ears, they also wear impressive multi-ton hats made from a different type of stone.
We figures of spiritual devotion rapanui, embodying the spirit of an outstanding ancestor.
Each was considered a living embodiment of a person.
One of the statues, known as Hoa Hakananaia, is in the British Museum and was a gift from a British naval captain to Queen Victoria in the 1860s.
The Chilean government and island authorities demanded their return in 2018.
But the island’s mayor suggested that he would prefer the museum’s financial commitment to maintain the island’s remaining moai.
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Source: La Opinion
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