Series of fires: Portugal calls for help as it grapples with wildfires

Portugal on Monday asked for help from its European partners to fight a series of fires that have injured a dozen people, burned homes and cut highways in the north of the country. “The situation is not out of control, but it is very complex. It is going to be a complicated day, and tomorrow too,” said the national commander of civil protection, André Fernandes. Portugal has thus “requested the support of the European Civil Protection Mechanism” in order to obtain four pairs of amphibious aircraft to put out the flames, while the country already has around thirty planes or helicopters.

“We will urgently mobilize eight firefighting planes,” announced the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, on the social network X, thanking France, Greece, Italy and Spain for their “rapid reaction.” According to a report provided by the civil protection at 1 p.m. (12 p.m. GMT), the forest fires that have been raging since this weekend have injured at least 12 firefighters, including two seriously, and caused the evacuation of around 70 people. A volunteer firefighter who was fighting a fire near Oliveira de Azeméis, in the Aveiro region (north), died “suddenly” during a meal break on Sunday, the Interior Ministry informed Monday.

Early this afternoon, 26 active fires were mobilizing some 2,300 firefighters on Monday, while the emergency services placed the country on “alert” between Saturday afternoon and Tuesday evening because the risk of fire is considered “very high” or “maximum” depending on the region, due to forecasts of high temperatures and strong winds. The most important fire has been raging since Sunday afternoon near Oliveira de Azeméis, mobilizing nearly 600 firefighters. Also in the Aveiro region, but a little further south, a fire affected at least two houses in two villages in the municipality of Albergaria-a-Velha, said the mayor, Antonio Loureiro.

“Right now we already have houses burning,” he told the news agency in the morning. Lusa. Two other houses were reportedly destroyed in Cabeceiras de Basto, in the northern district of Braga, according to local authorities. Traffic was interrupted on three motorways and other roads crossing the Aveiro region, the gendarmerie announced. Portugal had so far had a relatively calm summer on the fire front, with an area burned of 10,300 hectares until the end of August, a third of that of 2023 and seven times less than the average of the last 10 years.

After the deadly fires of June and October 2017, which caused more than a hundred deaths, the Iberian country increased its investment in prevention tenfold and doubled its budget for fighting forest fires. Experts believe that the increase in heat waves, as well as their increasing duration and intensity, is the consequence of climate change. The Iberian Peninsula is strongly affected by this global warming, while the heat waves or droughts it causes promote forest fires.