A fire has caused irreparable damage to the famous moai stone statues on Easter Island.
The forest fire tore through more than 100 hectares of the Rapa Nui National Park on Monday Oct. 3, affecting the wetland and moai in the Rano Raraku volcano sector, according to the park’s announcement on Facebook.
Images shared on social media showed some of the moai charred, standing in a burnt landscape.
Authorities said the moai are “totally charred”, and a shortage of volunteers had affected their ability to respond properly.
Easter Island has around 1,000 moai, with some reaching up to 10 meters tall. They were created about 500 years ago by the Polynesian tribe Rapa Nui and were meant to embody past ancestors.
Several of them are located in the affected area around the Rano Raraku volcano.
“The damage caused by the fire can’t be undone,” Easter Island’s mayor Pedro Edmunds Paoa said in a radio interview, according to the Guardian. “The cracking of an original and emblematic stone cannot be recovered, no matter how many millions of euros or dollars are put into it.”
He also said he believes the fire was “not accident” and that “all the fires on Rapa Nui are caused by human beings.”
Authorities have closed the area to visitors as they assess the extent of the damage, according to the New York Times.
Since 1995, the site has been a UNESCO World Heritage site, attracting million of tourists worldwide.
