Porto Velho (Brazil) (AFP)

Columns of smoke rise as far as the eye can see in the Brazilian state of Rondônia, large plots of land no longer have a tree and the air is very heavy with the smell of burning: part of the Amazon rainforest is consumed.

Skeletons of calcined trees still smoke sometimes in these desolate landscapes found in many parts of the "lung of the planet," AFP reporters found during a survey of the state of Rondônia.

In this border state of Bolivia, which is one of the most affected by uncontrollable fires, residents complain of having trouble breathing with the presence of these big clouds loaded with carbon.

"I've been living here for 20 years and I've seen a lot of fires," said Welis da Claiana, a 25-year-old woman interviewed by AFP in the capital Porto Velho, "but I never have anything seen from such ".

"Smoke affects 100% of our daily life, we get up in the morning tired of breathing all (that)".

This woman explains that the smoke pushed the local airport to cancel some flights. The car rental company she works for is threatened.

"The visibility (is) horrible," she says, blaming the big earthquake priorities, "nobody can do anything anymore".

When the flames came closer to her house, she was caulking. But she rushed her daughter to the hospital who had respiratory problems. One of his colleagues had to be hospitalized for the same reason.

Not far from this city of half a million inhabitants, fire is ravaging large areas of land victims of deforestation to make way for soybean farming or cattle breeding, exports from Brazil.

Despite the black columns of smoke rising and seriously limiting visibility, we can see walls of orange and brick flames that progress to the ground.

Sometimes, a single tree standing in the middle of a landscape of ashes, but totally calcined, testifies to the destruction on the march in the biggest rainforest of the planet.

- The night in daylight -

Near the locality of Abuna, hundreds of trees still stand, but all are burned, in a sinister landscape with gray and brown colors.

Some, several tens of meters high, have kept their foliage while the ground is on fire. But they are injured and will eventually die.

Elsewhere, in the state of Acre, bordering Peru, images provided by Greenpeace show a truck carrying huge tree trunks on a dirt road in the middle of a burned area.

When tree trunks of 30 meters are washed away, the rest of the vegetation is burnt on site and fires spread very quickly during the dry season which will last until October.

"It gets worse every year," Elior Amorim told AFP in Porto Velho, "but the awareness is not increasing, she said, denouncing deforestation.

Health problems, especially respiratory ones, have been reported in various Brazilian cities in recent days, in connection with the tons of carbon released into the atmosphere by fires.

And even Sao Paulo, the largest Brazilian metropolis yet located nearly 2,000 kilometers south of the Amazon, saw the night fall in broad daylight last Monday.

© 2019 AFP