- "We hope to give the fire as subdued in the next two days," say the deployed firefighters.
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| A firefighter struggles to put out the enormous flames of a forest fire near Boavista, Portugal. |
The fire in Portugal whose smoke reaches Madrid is reactivated and is out of control
The fire that was reactivated on Monday in the Serra da Estrela natural park, in central Portugal, forced more evacuations in villages on Tuesday and left two firefighters slightly injured, while the authorities hope to control the flames "in the next two days." The fire broke out on August 6 and was given as controlled eight days later, but this Monday it was reactivated with three new outbreaks that forced the fight to resume. The smoke has even reached Madrid.
"We hope to treat the fire as subdued in the next two days," said the Portuguese national Civil Protection commander, André Fernandes, who explained that they want to take advantage of the improvement in weather conditions forecast for that period. The fire is "quite fragmented" and affects a mountain area that is difficult to access, although the wind is expected to "lose intensity" overnight and favor combat work, he said.
This Tuesday afternoon, almost 1,300 firefighters, more than 400 ground extinction vehicles, and 17 aerial means we're working in Serra da Estrela -about 50 kilometers from the border with Spain. The flames, which in the last ten days spread through five municipalities, approached the village of Orjais on Tuesday, where some evacuations were carried out.
Since it began on August 6, the fire has left three seriously injured - firefighters who suffered an accident on Thursday -, 21 minor injuries and 39 people assisted in operations.
This Tuesday there was another accident with a fire truck that came to put out the flames, in which there were two minor injuries. When Civil Protection considered it dominated this Saturday, the fire had affected 14,757 hectares, according to provisional figures.
The most recent data from the European Copernicus monitoring system suggest that the fire has destroyed more than 23,000 hectares. The direction and strength of the wind caused the smoke from Serra da Estrela to cross the Iberian Peninsula and make itself felt in Madrid, where the 112 emergency center today received 360 calls from citizens alerted by the smell.
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Mainland Portugal has been suffering for more than a month from a wave of fires that have not given the authorities respite, which they must also counteract the effects of adverse weather. The most recent report from the Institute for the Conservation of Nature and Forests (ICNF, for its acronym in Portuguese) shows that this year, until July 31, the fires burned 58,354 hectares of forest mass.
The burned area is 59% greater than the annual measurement of the previous ten years. The Portuguese authorities have arrested 119 people suspected of the crime of forest fire this year, according to what the Portuguese Minister of Internal Administration, José Luís Carneiro, told local media on Sunday.
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