Almost 1,000 firefighters remained mobilized in the center of Portugal to avoid any new conflagration of a forest fire circumscribed the previous day and that, according to the first estimates, burned a record area of more than 64,000 hectares, this Monday, August 25.
This fire, which has been unleashed for eleven days in seven municipalities at the confluence of the districts of Coimbra, Guarda and Castelo Branco, devastated 64,451 hectares, the spokesman of the National Civil Protection Authority, commander Telmo Ferreira said to the AFP.
This is the largest fire ever registered in Portugal, according to data from the Institute for the Conservation of Nature and Forests (ICNF), which exceeds the previous record of 53,000 hectares devastated by a single forest fire in October 2017.
Devastating fires
This fire, caused by several enlightened that fell into a difficult access area, no longer presented any risk of propagation on Monday, but still mobilized the “963 firefighters supported by 300 vehicles” in “surveillance operations”, even if this workforce should be reduced in the next few hours, commander Ferreira said. Portugal found a little respite in the front of fire on Monday without important households identified by civil protection.
Like neighboring Spain, Portugal was affected by devastating fires this summer. Since the end of July, forest fires have killed four people and several houses and cultures wounded and destroyed, which devastate a total of 278,000 hectares, according to data from the European Forest Information System (EFFIS).
International reinforcements
In the dark year of 2017, more than 563,000 hectares had burned in fires that killed 119 people in Portugal, a record year since the EFFIS began registering these data in 2006. Faced with the magnitude of the fires, Portugal obtained international reinforcements within the framework of the European Civil Protection mechanism.
The Government has announced a series of emergency measures in favor of the affected populations, including financing for the reconstruction of the main destroyed residences or even help for farmers.
The Iberian Peninsula is strongly affected by climate change that causes heat waves and longer droughts, drying the vegetation and, therefore, promotes forest fires, according to experts.
Source: BFM TV
