This is the moment a man is completely drenched by a firefighting helicopter as it dumps water all over him during an extinguishing sortie over a Turkish forest fire.

The incident occurred in the neighbourhood of Kurtluca in the district of Pamukkale in the western Turkish province of Denizli on 14th August.

Mehmet Guzel, age not disclosed, a Pamukkale University staff member, who lives in the region, went to the burning area to participate in the extinguishing efforts together with other villagers.

Whilst the villagers waited for assistance from the authorities they started filling their tractor-trailers with water and rushed to the forest to douse the flames.

Mehmet was broadcasting live on Facebook when as seen in the footage he is alerted to the presence of the incoming chopper by the noise of the propellers.

Mehmet turns the camera up to the sky where he sees a fire-extinguishing helicopter flying directly overhead.

The helicopter releases its payload and a wall of water begins to fall towards Mehmet who continues to record capturing the exact moment he is hit by the water.

For a split second, he is engulfed and then re-emerges unharmed turning the camera on himself revealing that he has been completely drenched.

According to the statement made by Bekir Pakdemirli, The Minister of Agriculture and Forestry, on his Twitter account, all of the 299 forest fires in Turkey were brought under control, whilst cooling works were continuing in some regions as of 12th August.

Mehmet’s reported in a Facebook post that the fire that broke out in the forest area was quickly extinguished with the help of firefighters and villagers although efforts to keep the area damp are set to continue.

According to the data of the European Forest Fire Information System (EFFIS), an average of 20,760 hectares (51,299.07 acres) of land are burned every year in Turkey, and this amount has increased by 755 per cent in the last eight months.

Between January and August in 2021 177,476 hectares (438,552.74 acres) of forest are reported to have been burned.

According to the calculations of Doctor Nic Surawski, an environmental engineer, and a senior lecturer at Sydney University of Technology, a total of 15 million tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions were released by forest fires in Turkey this summer alone.

The amount of CO2 released by the fires has essentially cancelled out the reduction in CO2 emissions that TURKSTAT (TUIK) reported to the UN in April 2021.