Deadly Portugal wildfires force new evacuations
Lisbon — Deadly wildfires raging in Portugal have forced more people to evacuate their homes as crews battled dozens of blazes on Wednesday in the nation’s north.
Stifling heat and strong winds have fanned a spate of forest fires across the north and centre of the country that have killed seven people dead since the weekend.
Civil protection authorities listed 42 active fires on its website on Wednesday and said they had mobilized around 3,900 firefighters and over 1,000 vehicles.
In the Gondomar municipality, just outside Porto, authorities carried out more evacuations on Tuesday night.
Firefighters battling blazes in Arouca in the hard-hit Aveiro region told local media outlets the situation there was “uncontrollable.”
Around 20,000 hectares (49,400 acres) of vegetation have burned in the region, south of Porto, since Monday, according to data from the European Forest Fire Information System (Effis).
A total of 15 separate fires have passed the 1,000-hectare threshold since the fires began over the weekend, Effis data also showed.
Authorities in Aveiro said Tuesday evening that firefighters were on the verge of bringing one group of fires that had spread across a 100-kilometre (60-mile) perimeter under control.
Three firefighters died on Tuesday when their vehicle was trapped by the flames, civil protection authorities said, bringing the fire-related toll up to seven, with some 50 injured.
A 28-year-old Brazilian who worked for a forestry company died after he become trapped by the flames as he tried to collect some times. Two others suffered heart attacks and a volunteer firefighter died while taking a break from battling the flames.
Lisbon has upped fire prevention funding ten-fold and doubled the budget to fight wildfires since deadly blazes in 2017 claimed hundreds of lives.
The Iberian peninsula is particularly vulnerable to global warming, with heatwaves and drought exposing the region to blazes.
