more than 1,200 firefighters mobilized to put out a fire in a natural park in the center of the country

“It was chaos!” told AFP a resident of the village of Orjais, at the foot of the Serra da Estrela natural park, in central Portugal. Wednesday, August 17, many resources remain mobilized to overcome this inferno which began on August 6. Declared under control last week, the Serra da Estrela fire had regained strength on Monday.

As of Wednesday morning, more than 1,200 firefighters were on foot fromœwork, supported by 400 vehicles pending the intervention of air assets in the morning. The firefighters try to “stabilize” the fire and the “to master” by Friday, before temperatures rise again, explained Civil Protection Commander André Fernandes during a press briefing late Tuesday evening.

The Serra da Estrela fire injured 24 people, three of them seriously, and 45 people had to be evacuated preventively since Monday, according to the latest civil protection report. Among the slightly injured are two firefighters who were victims of an accident with their truck, which overturned.

This blaze, which is already the largest this summer in Portugal, has caused some 24,000 hectares to go up in smoke, including more than 8,000 since Monday, according to provisional data from the European forest fire information system. The smell of burning arrived in Madrid on Tuesday, Spanish emergency services reported. An investigation was opened to determine the origin of these resumptions of fire, which occurred at three different places simultaneously.