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 off 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 combat the flames, while the country already has around thirty planes and helicopters.
“We will urgently mobilise eight firefighting aircraft,” 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”.
Firefighters injured
According to a report provided by civil protection at 1 p.m. (8 a.m. in Quebec), the forest fires that have been raging since this weekend have injured at least 12 firefighters, including two seriously, and caused the evacuation of approximately 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 announced on 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 largest 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 Lusa news agency in the morning.
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.
Heat waves multiply
Portugal had so far had a relatively quiet summer on the fire front, with 10,300 hectares burned by the end of August, a third of that of 2023 and seven times less than the average of the last 10 years.
Following the deadly fires of June and October 2017, which left more than a hundred dead, 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, are consequences of climate change.
The Iberian Peninsula is being hit hard by this global warming, while the heat waves and droughts it causes are fuelling forest fires.