Guatemala City, May 23 (RHC)-- The president of Guatemala, Bernardo Arévalo de León, assured on Tuesday in a press conference at the facilities of the National Coordinator for Disaster Reduction (Conred) that the country faces a "complicated situation" with 75 active outbreaks of forest fires, the majority in the north of the Central American country.

"We are facing a complicated situation. We are facing this situation with all possible institutional resources, with different entities mobilizing human and technical resources to extinguish the fire, despite the difficulties," explained the president.

Among these difficulties, the president confessed, is the refusal of Congress to validate a State of Calamity that would have granted extra funds to the Government to address the emergency.  According to Conred, there are currently 75 active fires, 44 of them in the department of Petén, about 500 kilometers north of the capital.

The National Institute of Seismology, Volcanology, Meteorology and Hydrology (Insivumeh) issued an alert on Wednesday due to the "extremely poor" air quality in Guatemala City, for which educational authorities announced the suspension of any outdoor activity in all both public and private schools.

Last Monday, Insivumeh presented an extraordinary report in which it demonstrates that the air quality index that day was in the highest category of danger to health. This category highlights that "air quality can be considered an emergency condition" and specified that "the entire population is likely to be affected."

According to state sources, the origin of air pollution is determined not only by forest fires within Guatemalan territory, but by a situation that extends to the entire Mesoamerican region, since Honduras is also dealing with a similar situation.