2 weeks Ago By The Frontier Post
NELAS, Portugal (Reuters): Three Portuguese firefighters died on Tuesday in one of dozens of forest blazes ravaging the country’s central and northern regions, bringing the death toll from the latest wildfires to seven people since Saturday, authorities said. Portugal is fighting over 50 active wildfires on its mainland and has mobilised around 5,300 firefighters, as well as calling for European Union help. Authorities have closed several motorways, including a stretch of the main highway linking Lisbon and Porto, and suspended train connections on two railroad lines in northern Portugal.
ANEPC civil protection authority commander Andre Fernandes told reporters that three firefighters from the Vila Nova de Oliveirinha fire brigade had died while fighting a fire in Nelas, a town about 300 km (190 miles) northeast of Lisbon. Reuters footage overnight showed local residents pouring buckets of water on advancing flames near Nelas. Fernandes’ deputy Mario Silvestre said earlier the overall situation was “calmer but still worrying and complex .
.. with many villages and settlements being affected, and the teams very dispersed across this theatre of operations”.
He spoke from the command centre in Oliveira de Azemeis in the northwestern Aveiro district where a cluster of four blazes has caused the most damage so far, and where four people have died. In Aveiro alone, the blazes have burned through more than 10,000 hectares (24,710 acres) of forest and scrubland in the past two days, officials said, roughly the same acreage that was consumed by fires through the end of August in the entire country. Fernandes said late on Monday the Aveiro fires could engulf a further 20,000 hectares.
Portugal and neighbouring Spain have recorded fewer fires than usual after a rainy start to the year, but both remain vulnerable to the increasingly hot and dry conditions that scientists have blamed on global warming. Temperatures topped 30 degrees Celsius (86 degrees Fahrenheit) across the country over the weekend, when the fires first broke out and were fanned by strong winds. The meteorology agency IPMA forecasts they would stay above 30 C (86 F) for the next two days, amid extremely low humidity.
The danger of fires will remain ‘high, very high or maximum’ in the northern and central regions, it said. “We need to be realistic. We will have difficult hours in the coming days and we have to get ready for it,” Prime Minister Luis Montenegro told reporters on Monday night.
The government on Monday requested help from the European Commission under the EU civil protection mechanism, leading Spain, Italy and Greece to send two water-bombing aircraft each..
