From seminary to firefighting: former priest-in-training leads amazon communities against wildfire crisis

When wildfires erupted in Brazil’s Amazon municipality of Acará in August 2024, local civil defense coordinator Edson Abreu dos Santos faced a daunting challenge. The 48-year-old former seminary student had no fire brigade, water trucks, or aerial support to combat flames threatening the eastern Pará state community. With the fire burning along the remote Itapecuru stream, accessible only by boat, Santos turned to an unconventional but powerful resource: his neighbors.

From an improvised command post set up in a traditional riverside stilt house, Santos used WhatsApp to rally community support. His digital call for help brought more than 100 volunteers in rabetas—small wooden boats designed for navigating Amazon waterways. The makeshift firefighting brigade formed human chains, carrying 20-liter water barrels called carotes nearly a kilometer through dense forest. Many volunteers worked in flip-flops and went shirtless in the intense heat, dousing flames one barrel at a time with river water.

This grassroots effort successfully contained the fire’s advance until professional firefighters arrived from Macarena, over 100 kilometers away, bringing backpack sprayers and hoses. Santos’s transformation from aspiring priest to community fire coordinator reflects a broader challenge facing Amazon communities: combating increasing wildfire threats with limited resources but unlimited community spirit.

The Acará response demonstrates how local leadership and social networks can bridge critical gaps in environmental emergency response, offering a model for other remote communities facing similar climate-related disasters across the world’s largest rainforest.