Massive Fire Destroys Moai Structures In Eastern Island: Report

A fire raged through Easter Island in Chile in the Southeastern Pacific Ocean that burned all the landscape, harming a number of the 1,000 Moai statues there. According to a report from Newsweek, the images captured by the American Space Agency NASA's Landsat 9's Operational Land Imager-2 (OLI-2) show a massive brown plague on the east side of the island where the land was scorched by the fire near Rano Raraku, an extinct volcanic crater.

The Rapa Nui tribe built the iconic Moai statues on Easter Island, which is located about 2,200 miles west of Chile. The outlet further reported that according to the 2017 census, there are 7,750 people living on the tiny island, which is about 63.2 square miles in size.

As quoted by Newsweek, Edmundo Edwards, the director of the Rapanui Planetarium Foundation, asserted that the main cause of the fire was human activity.

Mr Edwards told Newsweek, "Since the time when the island was a sheep ranch in the early 1900s, it was customary to burn the dry grass so its new sprouts would provide good feed for sheep and cattle. This was customarily done around June-july, just before the winter rains and when there was a heavy wind, so the fire would sweep across the land and thus the grass rootlets would be saved and sprout with the first rain."

"So still the ranchers continue to set fire to the grass, although this is now forbidden when cattle feed becomes scarce. This is no doubt the origin of this fire, but no one claims to have caused it," he added.

The fire damaged and destroyed about 80 of the island's renowned Moai statues. These statues were built approximately between 1400 and 1650 A.D. in honour of deceased chieftains.

The people of Rapa Nui obtained lapilli tuff, a volcanic rock comprised of condensed ash, from the Rano Raraku crater and used it to sculpt the moai statues, according to NASA Earth Observatory. The sculptures have suffered severe burn damage from the fire in the area because of the composition of this tuff.