Scientists' film shows the reality of fighting fires in the Amazon

The heroic efforts of local firefighters to battle wildfires in the Amazon rainforest have been documented in a new short film commissioned by leading environmental scientists.

Featuring dramatic on-the-ground scenes of firefighters on the front lines in the battle to save areas of the Amazon rainforest from destructive wildfires, “Heroes in the Fire: The Fight of Local Brigades in the Amazon” spotlights small teams of firefighters.

The film features the local people who make up the brigades working long hours in oppressive conditions and highlights some of the tactics they use to combat the out-of-control fires that threaten large areas of the world's largest rainforest .

The film was made by an international team of scientists who have been studying the Tapajos region in the Amazon rainforest since 2010, particularly its ecology and the impacts of fires on biodiversity and carbon emissions.

During their research, they witnessed the brigades' efforts and wanted to tell their story.

“On a personal level, for me, the motivation for making this film is my immense admiration for these men,” said Dr Erika Berenguer, of Lancaster University and the University of London's Environmental Change Institute. 'Oxford.

“They were putting their own bodies in danger, I saw a burning log fall on the head of one of them, I saw them working without water to drink, I saw them exhausted and dirty but continuing without stopping all this to prevent the Amazon from burning.

“During the fighting, one of them died while driving on a road that was barely visible due to the smoke. Their stories are never told, but they were the protagonists of this fight.”

The film reveals how the brigades use labor-intensive tactics such as firebreaks: 2 meter wide corridors dug into the forest floor where all vegetation, such as plants and fallen leaves, is removed using hand tools and leaf blowers. The idea is to starve the advancing flames of fuel, stop their progress and protect the forest behind the rupture.

Dr. Berenguer appears in the film to explain how preliminary data shows that the work of local brigades, along with rain, helped reduce the area of ​​forest damaged by wildfires in 2023.

“Without the efforts of firefighters, who work in high temperatures and are exposed to smoke inhalation, much larger areas of the forest, one of the most biodiverse forests on the planet, would be damaged by the fire,” Dr. Berenguer said.

“The Amazon should not burn, and when it does, the fires change the composition of the forest, which the local population depends on to survive, impact biodiversity but also cause significant carbon emissions.”

Scientists in the film, including Dr Joice Ferreira from Embrapa in Brazil, explain that deforestation is one of the main causes of forest fires in the Amazon, with fire used as a means of clearing land. And once a forest burns the first time, it increases the risk of new forest fires.

Dr Ferreira said: “When forests have been damaged by fires, this makes them more vulnerable to more intense fires which burn much more quickly because there is more fuel in the form of dead trees killed by previous fires . And a more open tree canopy allows more air to further fan the flames.

Scientists have noticed changes in fires over the 14 years they have visited the area.

“The fires are changing. Last year they were more intense than when we visited in 2015,” Dr Berenguer said. “At the time, the flames were only 30 cm high and burned slowly on the forest floor. This time, the flames reached 15 to 20 meters in some places. This completely changed the dynamic of the fight for the firefighters.”

Professor Jos Barlow from Lancaster University commissioned the video because he believes it is important that Brazil's policy makers and the general public realize the difficulty and critical nature of the work undertaken by firefighters.

“We decided to make the film when we were talking to firefighters in December 2023: they were telling us their experiences and showing us their videos, and it was clear that their story needed to be told,” Professor Barlow said.

“We wanted to let local firefighters and residents tell their stories, reaching a broad audience including government agencies, people involved in planning and funding firefighting activities, as well as the general public. was to draw attention to the problem, some of the techniques they use that are most effective and the importance of their actions.

However, despite the heroic actions of firefighters, scientists warn that the best defense against wildfires is prevention.

“It is much more effective to prevent fires than to fight them,” said Dr Ferreira. “Unfortunately, this is not currently the case in the Amazon, where the focus is on firefighting and very little on prevention.”