Officials say a fire that spread through pavilions being used for U.N. climate talks in Brazil has prompted evacuations on the next-to-last day of the conference, but nobody was hurt.

Organizers said the fire was under control and caused no injuries. Firefighters and security teams responded promptly and continue to monitor the site. 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.

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. "We all worked so hard for this to happen and it's an experience that I don't want anybody to have," she said.

(AP Video by Joshua A. Bickel)

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