https://www.9news.com.au...e-46a1-a007-fe23d87987abFighting flames with 'super soaker' backpacks: How military are tackling Amazon firesNo one was in a hurry.
All around us smoke hung thick in the air, coming from one of the thousands of fires burning in the state of Rondonia in Brazil's west.
For much of this month fires have raged across Brazil. Rondonia was impacted more than any other state and now we were travelling with a fire crew over the dirt roads that linked properties in the Amazon.
It was symbolic of the response across Brazil, even as world leaders used words like "crisis" and "emergency".
At the G7 summit, 9000km away, the world's biggest economies had pledged around $29 million to help.
Here, it was difficult to see the flames among the huge expanse of rainforest that stretches across eight countries and an estimated 50 million sq/km.
The air was smokey and the ground along the roads were blackened, but these weren't the fires we are used to seeing in Australia.
The response was also very different.
Five firefighters and a soldier made up the crew accompanying us.
The firefighters were armed with backpacks filled with water, a modified version of the super-soaker water pistols we played with as kids.
The Amazon may be known as the lungs of the world, but most of it belongs to Brazil.
Bolsonaro, an unashamed populist and nationalist, had repealed environmental legislation and encouraged farmers in the region to take control of their land.
In most cases that meant burning it to the ground.
On the way to the fire we passed skinny cattle grazing in paddocks that just months earlier had been rainforest.
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