Max Henríquez advierte sobre El Niño tras incendios en Tolima

A forest fire that tore through Gualanday, a rural settlement in the municipality of Coello in Tolima, consumed more than 300 hectares of land between the night of August 20 and the early morning of August 21. The blaze threatened homes and nearby communities, forcing emergency crews to deploy across multiple active fire zones. The speed and intensity of the spread alarmed local authorities and drew the attention of public figures monitoring the crisis.

Paloma Valencia, a former presidential candidate, posted about the emergency as it unfolded, describing how the fire had intensified overnight and posed a direct risk to residents in the surrounding area. Her message was straightforward and urgent—a call to attention during a moment when the region was already stretched thin by the heat and dryness that had settled across much of Tolima.

Max Henríquez, a meteorologist with a public platform, responded to Valencia's post with a diagnosis. He pointed to two factors: the absence of rainfall and the heat waves sweeping the country. His answer was brief, but it carried weight because of what he had been saying for weeks about the broader climate picture. Henríquez had been tracking the development of El Niño and its effects on Colombia, warning that the phenomenon was bringing with it exactly the conditions now fueling the fires—prolonged heat and a stubborn lack of rain.

In earlier comments, Henríquez had been more explicit about the connection. He noted that the shortage of rainfall and elevated temperatures were hallmarks of El Niño as it developed. He also observed that while a tropical wave was passing over the country, it was weak and scattered, bringing only light and patchy precipitation. The rain that did fall was not enough to meaningfully alter the dry conditions that had taken hold across much of the landscape.

Henríquez stopped short of saying that El Niño directly caused the Gualanday fire. Instead, he framed the phenomenon as creating the backdrop—the heat and drought that make vegetation vulnerable and fires more likely to start and spread. His comments placed the immediate crisis within a larger, longer-term pattern that he had been warning about since earlier in the year.

Back in June, Henríquez had told journalists that forecasts pointed to an El Niño event of significant intensity, with drought as one of its primary consequences. More recently, he had returned to that theme, noting that the worst of El Niño had not yet arrived. He pointed to falling water levels in the Magdalena River and the scarcity of rain in parts of its basin as evidence that the phenomenon was still unfolding and would likely worsen before it improved.

The fire in Gualanday, then, was not an isolated incident but a symptom of conditions that Henríquez saw as likely to persist and intensify. His response to Valencia was a reminder that the immediate emergency—the flames, the evacuations, the destroyed hectares—was connected to a climatic shift that would shape the coming months. The meteorologist's warnings suggested that communities across Colombia should prepare for more of the same: heat, dryness, and the dangers that follow.