Lacking trucks and gear, a civil servant once destined for the priesthood now uses WhatsApp groups to direct volunteers who must manually carry river water through dense forest to tackle record blazes deep in an Amazonian town five times the size of New York City.
Once rare, record-breaking wildfires destroyed millions of hectares across the Brazilian Amazon in recent years, leaving surviving forests increasingly fragile and susceptible to recurring blazes.
Only 16% of Amazonian municipalities in Brazil have operational military fire brigades, forcing rural towns to rely on underfunded local offices and unpaid volunteers to defend the rainforest.
