Fighting fire in Brazil's Cerrado

With its combination of scrub and grasses, strong winds and dry climate, the Cerrado in central Brazil is extremely prone to wildfires. Located between the Amazon rain forest, Atlantic forest and the region of Pantanal, the Cerrado, which is South America's largest savanna region, has witnessed an 800% rise in fires this year alone.

The Cerrado is one of Brazil's biggest biomes, boasting over 10,000 species of plants, almost half of which cannot be found anywhere else in the world. It is also home to animals like jaguars, wolves, giant armadillos, and hundreds of bird species, which shelter in the gnarly trees characteristic of the landscape. Once a wildfire spreads, these animals either burn to death or lose their habitat.

The state of Mato Grosso, where much of the Cerrado is located, is Brazil's largest cotton and soy producer. Its vast farms are located on former forest lands which were cleared for agricultural purposes. Many farmers use fires to create space for their cattle. Flames can easily get out of control and spread to natural reserves and neighboring farms.

When a fire gets out of control, the first people called to the scene are local firefighters working in the countryside. If a blaze is too much for them to handle, elite teams are called in. Trained in forest and mountain navigation as well as forest survival, these special firefighters support and manage local efforts and tailor plans aimed to bring the flames under control.

If a forest fire rages out of control, the elite firefighters might choose to start an intentional counter blaze to starve it of fuel. After burning a controlled area several meters wide, the teams are able to take control of the original fire. They also use water (pictured) to improve soil protection.

"We burn a 50 meter area to save kilometers of forest," says elite firefighter Isaac Wihby (pictured). "Of course, we would prefer not to burn a centimeter but sometimes we need to adapt to the situation."

The elite teams are composed of squads of four people. Working in the Cerrado is not an easy task. Even without fires, temperatures can reach 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit). The teams work on ten-day deployments looking for fires. They stay at local houses and sleep in hammocks. Operations can continue until midnight, but nonetheless, the new working day begins at 4.30.

Without proper training or equipment, locals use whatever they can find to battle the flames until the firefighters arrive. When a fire broke out in a cornfield (pictured) recently, farmers had no water tanks, so tried using branches and sticks to beat back the flames. They were not successful, and the entire field caught alight within a matter of minutes.

The elite firefighters also train local farmers on how to best respond to fires when they break out. Once trained and instructed, the locals set counter fires as a way of learning how to tackle uncontrolled flames in the future (pictured).