‘TOTALLY CHARRED’

Easter Island Forest Fire Causes ‘Irreparable’ Damage to Giant Head Statues

The island’s mayor thinks the devastating blaze was “not an accident.”

Some of Easter Island’s famous giant head statues have been damaged beyond repair in a catastrophic wildfire, authorities said. The ancient stone figures, known as moai, were caught up in a blaze that has been raging on the island since Monday, local officials said. The island around 2,175 miles off the coast of Chile has over 1,000 stone statues—believed to have been carved by the island’s original habitants in the thirteenth century—but heritage officials fear some have been lost to the flames. “The moai are totally charred and you can see the effect of the fire upon them,” said Ariki Tepano, director of the Ma’u Henua community which manages the park, adding that some of the damage was “irreparable.” Easter Island Mayor Pedro Edmunds Paoa said that he believed the fire was “not an accident.” “The damage caused by the fire can’t be undone,” he added. “The cracking of an original and emblematic stone cannot be recovered, no matter how many millions of euros or dollars are put into it.”