Fire prompts evacuations at UN climate talks in Brazil, and 13 people suffer smoke inhalation

BELEM, Brazil (AP) — A fire briefly spread through pavilions being used for U.N. climate talks in Brazil and prompted evacuations Thursday on the next-to-last day of the conference, and officials said 13 people were treated for smoke inhalation.

Organizers said the fire was controlled in about six minutes. Fire officials ordered the evacuation of the entire site for the conference, known as COP30, and the venue remained closed for about seven hours following the fire.

Attendees trickled back into the COP30 venue after it reopened. Some posed for pictures in the nighttime glow of the signage at the entrance. Others returned to rooms further from the pavilions to resume negotiations or to retrieve belongings that had been left behind. Security staff were stationed behind metal barricades to keep people out of the pavilions and a curtain veiled off the area that the blaze had destroyed.

Brazil’s Tourism Minister Celso Sabino told journalists at the scene that the fire started near the China Pavilion, which was among several pavilions set up for events on the sidelines of the climate talks. Video footage showed the blaze starting along a wall near a cluster of many of the Africa pavilions and the Climate Live Entertainment + Culture Pavilion.

The fire quickly spread to neighboring pavilions, said Samuel Rubin, one of the people in charge of the Climate Live pavilion.

Video showed huge flames in one of the pavilions, which are reinforced canvas or fabric structures that typically have three walls and a floor.

Para state Gov. Helder Barbalho told local news outlet G1 that a generator failure or a short circuit in a booth may have started the fire.

Much of the summit venue in Belem was still under construction right up until the conference opened, with exposed beams, open plywood floors and metal meshed-in corridors leading nowhere outside the convention center. During a pre-summit event, drilling and jackhammering could be heard as world leaders delivered speeches and scores of workers in hardhats scurried around unfinished pavilions shrouded in plastic.

Gabi Andrade, a volunteer with COP30 from host city Belem, said she has been working on accreditations at the conference for the last three weeks. Thursday was her first free afternoon and she’d just gotten off her lunch break and was exploring the Singapore pavilion when the fire broke out.

She said she saw black smoke. A security guard grabbed her hand and showed her to the exit as she cried and screamed “fire.”

Beneath the shock of the situation, she worried what this would mean for the Brazilian reputation, hosting the talks. “It’s so sad for us,” she said. “We all worked so hard.”

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Associated Press writer Gabriela Sa Pessoa contributed from Sao Paolo.

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This story was produced as part of the 2025 Climate Change Media Partnership, a journalism fellowship organized by Internews’ Earth Journalism Network and the Stanley Center for Peace and Security.