‘Flames that consumed the hills’: Portugal, Spain reel from wildfires | Climate Crisis News
Emergency services are under strain due to the ‘worst’ fires in Portugal in years, Al Jazeera’s Sonia Gallego says.
Thousands of firefighters backed by the military are battling dozens of wildfires across Spain and Portugal as the death toll has increased to six since the outbreaks began.
Two firefighters were killed on Sunday – one in each country, both in road accidents – taking the death toll to two in Portugal and four in Spain.
The Iberian Peninsula has been particularly affected by wildfires that have ravaged Southern Europe this summer. They have been fuelled by heatwaves and drought blamed on climate change.
On Monday, five major fires remained active in Portugal with more than 3,800 firefighters tackling them, civil protection authorities said.
“We still have firefighters who are monitoring the area here, the occasional smoke which is coming out from the land here, but of course, these are the charred remains of the flames that just completely consumed these hills,” Al Jazeera’s Sonia Gallego said, reporting from Tarouca, Portugal.
The fires in the Portuguese town are now under control, but emergency services are worried about the possibility of them reigniting, Gallego said.
Emergency services are already under “enormous strain” in what appears to be some of the “worst” fires in the area in years, she added.
President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa said a firefighter died on Sunday in a traffic accident that seriously injured two colleagues.
A former mayor in the eastern town of Guarda also died on Friday while trying to fight a fire.
About 2,160sq km (835sq miles) of land has burned across Portugal since the start of the year.
Neighbouring Spain battles blazes too
In Spain, more than 3,430sq km (1,325sq miles) of land has burned this year, setting a new national record, according to the European Forest Fire Information System.
The head of Spain’s Civil Protection and Emergencies agency, Virginia Barcones, told broadcaster TVE on Monday that there were 23 “active fires” that pose a serious and direct threat to people.
The fires, now in their second week, were concentrated in the northwestern regions of Galicia, Castile and Leon, and Extremadura.
In Ourense province of Galicia, firefighters battled to put out fires as locals in just shorts and T-shirts used water from hoses and buckets to try to stop the spread.
Officials in Castile and Leon said a firefighter died on Sunday night when the water truck he was driving flipped over on a steep forest road and down a slope.
Two other volunteer firefighters have died in Castile and Leon while a Romanian employee of a riding school north of Madrid lost his life trying to protect horses from a fire.
