Wind is complicating the extinguishing operations of the fires that have been raging in northern and central Portugal since Sunday, leaving seven dead, including four firefighters. On Wednesday 18 September, more than forty fires were still out of control and 5,500 firefighters, 1,700 vehicles and 32 aircraft were mobilised, according to the civil protection website. If 2024 had been a quiet year so far in terms of fires, with less than 10,000 hectares burned by the end of August, more than 72,000 hectares of forest would have been burned since Sunday in Portugal, according to provisional data from the European Forest Fire Information System (Effis) of the Copernicus Observatory. A toll that risks continuing to increase.
In fact, in the Iberian country all the ingredients are present for a simple spark to turn into a violent fire: strong winds, with gusts of 70 kilometres per hour, temperatures that are still high for the end of summer, exceeding 30 degrees, and a very low level of humidity, below 20%, even 10% in some places.
This dangerous cocktail, well known to meteorologists, pushed the government to declare, starting on Sunday, the “alert situation”. This extended until Thursday evening. Several villages were confined and hundreds of people displaced. In addition, following an extraordinary council of ministers convened on Tuesday afternoon, the “calamity situation” It was decreed in the municipalities affected by the fires, in order to speed up the care of the victims and the reconstruction of homes and businesses destroyed by the flames.
Seven people arrested
“We know that there are natural phenomena and circumstances of abandonment that facilitate the birth of forest fires, but there are too many coincidences”declared Prime Minister Luis Montenegro (Social Democratic Party, PSD, centre-right), affirming his intention to “prosecute those responsible for these atrocities”Seven people have been arrested since Sunday in connection with several fires that could have been deliberate.
The Aveiro region in the north of the country – in particular the municipalities of Arouca, Agueda, Albergaria-a-Velha and Sever do Vouga – is undoubtedly the most affected by the fires, which are also affecting the regions of Porto, Viseu, Tâmega and Coimbra. In recent days, images of houses engulfed in flames and residents trying to put them out with garden hoses or small fire extinguishers, as well as endless queues of vehicles trying to escape, under a sky black with ash, have revived memories of the tragedy of 2017. In June of that year, the Pedrogao Grande forest fires, the deadliest ever recorded, left more than sixty dead in just a few days.
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