Galicia woke up this Wednesday with a thick layer of smoke in its firmament that remained all morning, leaving a cloudy sky in a good part of the community – especially in the south – and this, to the naked eye, tinted the moon and the sun with reddish tones. Both phenomena were due to Smoke from the fires that continue to ravage the Portuguese mountains and that at the time of going to press this edition had burned more than 10,000 hectares. In fact, the president of the Xunta, Alfonso Rueda, has committed his administration’s support in the fight against fires in the neighboring country. The seriousness of the situation in Portugal is shared by the Galician community, not only because of its proximity, but also because of its own experience: on Wednesday, firefighters managed to combat four fires that burned more than 300 hectares.
Beyond the visual, the impact of the forest fires in northern Portugal has also been Galician cities further south will wake up to a strong smell of smoke, as was the case of Vigo. The southern regions of the Galician community, especially Baiona and the city of Oliva, continued to be covered in clouds of smoke until after noon. In the case of points located further north or inland, such as Santiago, the sky was also overcast at dawn, but cleared up as the day went on.
According to Meteogalicia and Ep, the increase in temperatures has made the smoke veil disappear, but the institute has warned against new smoke influxes possible if southerly winds were to occur, a scenario that is becoming increasingly likely as the duration of the outbreaks lengthens. In any case, in the afternoon, and despite the nitrogen indices that have increased since dawn, the Galician weather stations showed good air quality results, with “small oscillations” but without notifying alerts. The data from the six stations in Pontevedra were confirmed this Wednesday by the subdelegate of the provincial government, Abel Losada, precisely when he presented a new mobile application to consult the air quality index in real time.
In the scenario that Galicia faced yesterday on its mountain, the protagonists were four fires which together burned an area of more than 300 hectares. The largest of them, which began on Monday at noon in the parish of Pentes, in A Gudiña (Orense), had burned more than 240 people yesterday afternoon; and, although Medio Rural considered it under control in the morning, in the middle of the afternoon it reported its reactivation.
A second, smaller fire was also still active in the municipalities of Chandrexa de Queixa and Requeixo (Orense), which started on Tuesday afternoon and affected almost 20 hectares. Two others were stabilised or controlled, in Cercedo-Cotobade-Aguasantas (Pontevedra), which burned another 20 hectares; and a second in A Gudiña, in the parish of Borxa, which affected around 90 people.
Galicia offers its help
The president of the Xunta, Alfonso Rueda, proposed this Wednesday the collaboration of Galicia and its “experienced and efficient” fire-fighting system to help put out the fires that have already killed seven people in Portugal. The Galician president publicly conveyed this to the president of the CCDR Nord, Antonio Cunha, during the 1st Iacobus Congress on cooperation between Galician and Portuguese higher education centres, in Orense. In this sense, Rueda recalled that in August a joint firefighting base was inaugurated in Verín (Orense), “but near Chaves (Portugal)”, a place that “responds to the need to have operational resources as if there were no borders”. “I believe that in emergency services it is necessary that we operate with absolute permeability”, he stressed.
“Now we see how the north of Portugal is experiencing these terrible fires from which no one is safe and that is why I take this opportunity to offer the collaboration of the Xunta, the Autonomous Community of Galicia and the experienced and efficient firefighting system” that it has, said the regional president, who also took the opportunity to say. be grateful that Galicia received help from Portugal “when the cooperation of our Portuguese brothers was necessary.”
