(Lisbon) A water bomber plane that was fighting forest fires in Portugal crashed early Friday evening near Vila Nova de Foz Coa, in the region of Guarda (north), causing the death of the pilot, his sole occupant, civil protection announced.
Posted at 5:38 p.m.
“At this stage we don’t have any details about what happened,” national civil protection commander André Fernandes told the media earlier.
The aircraft was a medium-sized, FireBoss-type aircraft.
“It is with great dismay that I learned of the death of the pilot of the plane which crashed while fighting a fire,” Portuguese Prime Minister Antonio Costa reacted on his Twitter account.
In this country plagued for a week with scorching temperatures and a series of fires, the emergency services identified a dozen active fires on Friday evening, which mobilized more than 900 firefighters.
At the same time, also in northern Portugal, one of the most worrying fires was raging in the municipality of Baiao, a hilly area in the Porto region, upstream from the Douro, the great river that crosses it.
At the gates of the village of Eiriz, a front of flames continued to progress slowly towards a winding road, but the wind was blowing weakly and in the opposite direction to the dwellings.
When an Italian Canadair stopped its noria in order to pour out its clouds of water, the firefighters positioned themselves on the road to prevent the fire from descending deeper into the valley and around the houses to protect them.
Owner of the house closest to the edge of the forest, Maria, a 71-year-old retired teacher, who did not wish to give her last name, sprinkles the vegetation in front of her door and asks the firefighters if she can offer them something to eat or drink.
“Every year in this season, there are fires here, but usually it is not so strong”, she testified to AFP, while the fire which prowled around her garden declared itself not far from there on Thursday at dawn.
“It’s really hot, and it’s been going on for several days,” commented another resident, Afonso Almeida, a 67-year-old carpenter.
Before dropping slightly on Friday, temperatures had reached 47 degrees the day before in northern Portugal, a record for a month of July in this country.
Since the start of 2022, just over 30,000 hectares have gone up in smoke in Portugal, the highest figure on July 15 since 2017, a year marked by deadly forest fires that killed around 100 people.
On Wednesday in Greece, two of the four members of the crew of a helicopter which took part in the fight against a forest fire on the island of Samos died when the aircraft crashed at sea.