About forty forest fires continue to ravage the north and center of Portugal on Wednesday, September 18, hit for several days by a wave of fires fanned by heat and wind, causing at least seven deaths.
Three firefighters died on Tuesday, September 17 while fighting a forest fire in the north of Portugal, hit since this weekend by fires that have already ravaged an area larger than those burned during the rest of the summer, bringing the death toll to seven. These three firefighters, two women and a man, were trapped by the flames near Tabua, in the region of Coimbra (center), the Ministry of the Interior said.
The other victims of the fires are a 28-year-old Brazilian employed by a forestry company, who died of burns on Monday while trying to retrieve tools, two people who suffered heart attacks and a volunteer firefighter who died of a sudden illness on the sidelines of an operation.
“The day [Tuesday] was quite difficult (…) and the night will be too” due in particular to strong winds forecast, said the spokesman for the civil protection services André Fernandes during a press briefing on Tuesday evening. He also specified that 62 people had to be rehoused, adding that he did not yet have complete data on the number of injured and houses affected.
The Aveiro region most affected by the fires
The civil protection lists on its website 42 active fires mobilizing some 3,900 firefighters supported by more than a thousand vehicles.
According to local media, authorities had to carry out new evacuations during the night of Tuesday to Wednesday in the municipality of Gondomar, in the Porto region (north), while firefighters described an “uncontrollable” situation in Arouca, in the Aveiro district, the most affected by the disasters.
In this region alone, some 20,000 hectares of vegetation have burned since Monday, according to data from the European Forest Fire Information System (Effis), which listed around fifteen other fires that had exceeded the threshold of one thousand hectares consumed this week in the rest of the country. In the Aveiro region, several fronts of a group of four fires that had formed a perimeter of around one hundred kilometres were on the verge of being brought under control thanks to the efforts of firefighters, the authorities informed Tuesday evening.
The “alert situation”, in effect since Saturday afternoon due to a risk of fire deemed “maximum” in a large part of the northern half of the country, has been extended until Thursday evening.
The authorities in Lisbon have activated the European Civil Protection Mechanism to obtain eight additional water bomber planes. Spain, France, Italy and Greece have responded to the call. On Wednesday, the resigning Minister of the Interior Gérald Darmanin announced that he was sending two additional Canadairs to Portugal, “an unprecedented level of support in the framework of European cooperation”.
2 Canadairs supplémentaires :
face à l’ampleur des #feux de forêt au #Portugal, la France porte à 4 les moyens aériens déployés, un niveau de soutien inédit dans le cadre de la coopération européenne.Nous le devons à l’engagement sans failles de la @SecCivileFrance qui fait…
— Gérald DARMANIN (@GDarmanin) September 18, 2024
After indicating that measures would be quickly taken to help the municipalities affected by this disaster, Prime Minister Luis Montenegro also announced the creation of a “specialized team” to investigate the criminal origin of the forest fires, following an extraordinary council of ministers.
