“If it’s too late, at least we try,” Hugo, 26, said defiantly as he filled his water tank. “Fifty thousand hectares have already been destroyed, what will we tell our children?”

Hugo grew up in the area and returned from his home in Bali to keep an eye on his mother’s house in the village of Arès, which is dangerously close to the forest fires.

“It’s horrible, it’s our house, it’s our region, it’s our forest, it’s where we grew up, it’s where our family lives, where we live, it’s horrible. I feel very sad,” Maëlys, 23, told us, her face covered in soot.

“I’m a nurse and I’m here to help,” she added. Maëlys said that her friends have large water tanks, which they then use to try to put out the fires that break out and prevent them from spreading.

“In the morning I’m at the hospital working and in the afternoon I’m in the forest helping,” he said.