Cooler temperatures and higher air humidity levels helped firefighters in parched Portugal on Wednesday contain more than a dozen blazes that raged across the country, but officials cautioned that the risk of new fires remained high.
Five fires were burning out of control in the thick-wooded centre and north of the country, down from 21 late on Tuesday, with the largest fire burning in a forest near Coimbra, Portugal’s third-largest city.
The blaze, which has burned since Sunday, forced the evacuation of about 60 people from a village near the central town of Penela, but firefighters said they hoped to bring it under control later on Wednesday.
”The intensity of the fire is diminishing considerably. Let’s see if we are a bit luckier today,” the fire chief of Penela, Mario Lourenco, told radio TSF.
About 1 500 firefighters and 600 soldiers backed by more than 400 vehicles are involved in the effort against the flames in Portugal, facing its worst drought since 1945, the civil protection agency said.
Nine water-dropping aircraft from five fellow European Union countries — France, Germany, Italy, Spain and The Netherlands — are in Portugal to help firefighters contain the nation’s worst outbreak of blazes so far this year.
Villagers in Lamas and Urzes in the centre of the country applauded when three Puma helicopters sent by Germany, along with 25 anti-fire specialists, arrived in the area on Tuesday to help protect their homes, daily newspaper Jornal de Noticias reported.
The Portuguese government appealed for international help over the weekend, saying it lacked the means to bring the blazes under control.
Temperatures were forecast to reach highs of between 25 and 34 degrees Celsius across the country on Wednesday, compared with maximum temperatures of 36 degrees Celsius the day before, the national weather office said.
The head of the League of Portuguese Firefighters, Duarte Caldeira, warned that Portugal’s largely volunteer firefighting force will collapse from exhaustion if the fires continue to the end of the month.
”The firefighting forces are at their limit. I have met with firefighters who have been battling blazes since Saturday, with just short breaks of just a few hours to rest,” he told daily newspaper Correio da Manha.
President Jorge Sampaio was scheduled to visit the headquarters of the national civil protection agency, which is coordinating the fight against the fires, later on Wednesday and will hold talks with Defence Minister Luis Amado.
Wildfires have destroyed at least 180 000ha of land so far, General Luis Ferreira do Amaral, the head of the National Forest Fire Authority, told a news conference on Tuesday in the latest official estimate of the fire damage.
The previous estimate issued by the agriculture ministry last week put the amount of charred forest and farmland at 134 500ha.
The fires have killed 15 people, including 10 firefighters, and destroyed more than 100 homes and nearly 500 farm buildings, according to interior ministry estimates. — Sapa-AFP