One of the moai statues damaged by a fire that broke out on Easter Island, Chile, on October 6, 2022 Photo: VCG

A forest fire on Chile's Easter Island in early October damaged at least 177 moai statues, ancient monoliths that have made the Polynesian island world renowned, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) said Tuesday.

The report followed an exploratory mission to the island on October 17-21 led by the director of UNESCO's regional office in Chile, Claudia Uribe, the office said in a statement.

On Easter Island, which lies some 3,500 kilometers off the west coast of Chile, 100 hectares were razed by forest fire in early October, Carolina Perez, Chile's cultural heritage undersecretary, said in a Twitter post. The area around the Rano Raraku volcano, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, was most affected. 

"Nearly 60 hectares were affected, including some moai," Perez added. 

The mission evaluated the need for emergency UNESCO funds to help assess the scale of the damage to this World Heritage Site, as well as strengthen its comprehensive management and protection plan for the site.

"The idea is to focus this aid on diagnostic tasks to evaluate the extent of the damage caused by the fire and determine the necessary actions to recover the park and its future protection," said Uribe.

Fire spread more than approximately 240 hectares, damaging vegetation and archaeological structures, including 177 moai statues, according to an initial report from Chile's National Forestry Corporation.

"The damage caused by the fire can't be undone," Pedro Edmunds, mayor of Easter Island, told local media, and believed that the fire was "not an accident," adding "all the fires on Rapa Nui are caused by human beings."

The area has an estimated several hundred moai statues, as well as a large quarry where the stone used to carve the sculptures is extracted.

Moai statues are "stone witnesses of a society of Polynesian origin that from the 10th to the 16th century built sanctuaries and statues that make up an incomparable cultural legacy that fascinates the entire world," said UNESCO.

Easter Island, which is situated thousands of kilometers off the coast of Chile, covers 163.6 square kilometers and is home to some 7,750 inhabitants concentrated mainly in Hanga Roa, the capital and only town.

Before the pandemic, Easter Island, whose main livelihood is tourism, received some 160,000 visitors globally a year, on two daily flights. 

But with the arrival of COVID-19 in Chile, tourist activity was completely suspended.

The fire came just three months after the island was reopened to tourism on August 5, after two years of closure due to COVID-19. 

Agencies