Residents in the Brazilian city of Porto Velho city were battling blazes spreading in the dry brush on 16 August, as firefighters arrived at the remote jungle location to fight the fires that continue to threaten the Amazon.
Smoke could be seen billowing as the fire edged closer to a farmer’s home in an area of the Amazon rainforest in Rondônia state.
‘We are poor, my salary is just to feed my family. The fire comes to end everything in a fraction of seconds,’ local resident Rosalino De Oliveira said.
In This Story: Brazil
Its capital is Brasília, and its most populous city is São Paulo. The federation is composed of the union of the 26 states and the Federal District. It is the largest country to have Portuguese as an official language and the only one in the Americas, as well as the most populous Roman Catholic-majority country.
Its Amazon basin includes a vast tropical forest, home to diverse wildlife, a variety of ecological systems, and extensive natural resources spanning numerous protected habitats. Brazil is classified as an upper-middle income economy by the World Bank and a newly industrialized country.