Brazilian firefighters toil in Amazon region hazy with smoke

Equipped with hoses connected to rubber backpacks, Brazilian firefighters in the Amazon on Monday raced in a truck along dirt roads toward plumes of smoke after a spotter in a military helicopter directed them to a fast-spreading fire.

A landowner opened the gate of a barbed wire fence and the firefighters set to work, dousing a conflagration they believed was intentionally set to prepare land for crops or pasture.

When their water supply ran out, they made a fire break, clearing brush with machetes and chainsaws to starve the blaze of its fuel.

The smoke-shrouded scene near the lush Jacunda national forest in the Amazonian state of Rondonia, witnessed by an Associated Press team, showed the enormity of the challenge ahead: putting out a multitude of blazes and safeguarding in the long term a vast region described by world leaders as critical to the health of the planet.

The country's National Space Research Institute, which monitors deforestation, has recorded that the number of fires has risen by 85 per cent to more than 77,000 in the last year, a record since the institute began keeping track in 2013.

About half of the fires have been in the Amazon region, with many in just the past month.

At a summit in France, the Group of Seven nations pledged USD 20 million on Monday to help fight the flames in the Amazon and protect the rainforest, in addition to a separate USD 12 million from Britain and USD 11 million from Canada.

The international pledges came despite tensions between European countries and Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, who has accused rich countries of treating the region like a "colony" and suggested the West is angling to exploit Brazil's natural resources.

But the funds, which are widely seen as critical support, are still a relatively meager amount for dealing with an environmental crisis that threatens what French President Emmanuel Macron has called "the lungs of the planet."
In a nearby village, Darcy Rodrigo De Souza walked barefoot into a shop where people drank coffee and ate Pao de Queijo, traditional Brazilian cheese bread, on a street named "New Progress."