Up to 2,800 firefighters were mobilized on Sunday to try to put out a spate of wildfires ravaging Portugal, where searing temperatures prompted the government to step up mobilization for relief efforts by decreing a “state of emergency”.
• Also read: Horne Foundry: Similarities to the Norton Factory
• Also read: Tornado Alert: A severe thunderstorm hit Alberta on Thursday
The largest outbreak has been raging in the Ourém region (centre) since Thursday and mobilized almost 700 firefighters alone.
“The fire arrived 50 meters from the last house in the village (…). Everything is burned there,” Donzilia Marques told AFP, pointing to the hills between her hamlet of Travessa de Almogadel and the town of Freixianda.
The 76-year-old pensioner, who had been evacuated from her home the night before, was able to return there on Sunday morning and was relieved to find no house there had been damaged.
But the fire, which according to an initial estimate would have devastated at least 1,500 hectares of vegetation, destroyed at least two homes, according to emergency services, who reported further temporary evacuations from villages threatened by the blazes.
Another fire, which mobilized 450 firefighters, has been raging a few kilometers away since Friday after reporting in the municipality of Pombal, also at the confluence of the districts of Leiria and Santarém.
The fires of the last few days have caused around forty minor injuries to firefighters and the population, but most of the victims were treated at the scene for symptoms of poisoning or exhaustion, according to a report by the country’s civil defense commander, Andre Fernandes, presented on Sunday evening.
“Extreme Weather Summit”
For the third day in a row, peacekeepers have had to deal with more than a hundred arson fires across the country while “the peak of extreme weather” is yet to come, stressed Mr Fernandes.
The thermometers have already reached 44 degrees Celsius in places and the Portuguese Meteorological Institute expects temperatures to continue to rise until the middle of next week.
After this “high-risk” weekend, the Portuguese government has decided to declare a “state of emergency” between Monday and Friday, according to Prime Minister Antonio Costa, who canceled a trip to Mozambique to monitor the situation as closely as possible. to increase the mobilization of the emergency services and the restrictions they can impose.
Lisbon has also called on the European Union to activate its joint civil protection mechanism and secure the deployment of two sea bomber planes based in Spain.
While Interior Minister José Luis Carneiro said Portugal was facing the “worst combination of factors” since the June and October 2017 fires that killed more than a hundred people, President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa argued that the level of emergency preparedness “is not be comparable”.
The fires, which are proliferating around the world, are linked to various phenomena that scientists are anticipating due to global warming. The rise in temperature, the multiplication of heat waves and the local decrease in precipitation are an ideal combination for the development of fires.