Firefighters quell most of Portugal’s worst wildfires, fight still on

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By Miguel Pereira and Pedro Nunes

VIZEU DISTRICT, Portugal (Reuters) -Firefighters tackling deadly wildfires in central and northern Portugal had doused the flames in the Aveiro district, one of the worst-hit, as of Thursday, and were focusing on eight large blazes still raging elsewhere.

After five days of ravaging tens of thousands of hectares of forest and farmland, destroying houses and claiming seven lives, the fires in Oliveira de Azemeis, Albergaria-a-Velha and Sever da Vouga, in the northwestern district of Aveiro, were no longer listed as active on the civil protection service’s fires portal.

The flames left parking lots with lines of burnt cars, trees and roads with smoke still billowing in Albergaria-a-Velha.

“It was horrific, horrible, the fire passed by very quickly because of the wind but it was really bad,” Maria Rodrigues, resident of the village of Macieira further north, told Reuters.

She worried about her 11 sheep. “Now they don’t have anything to eat because there’s nothing on the mountain,” she said.

Cooler air temperatures with more humidity since Wednesday have helped the firefighting efforts after an unseasonably hot streak during which gusts of wind had fanned the flames.

“The weather situation looks set to improve going forward, however the next 12 hours will still be complex,” civil protection commander Andre Fernandes told reporters.

On Wednesday, a 270-strong Spanish military emergencies team joined the effort to help exhausted emergency workers in the central Vizeu district adjacent to Aveiro. Nine aircraft were backing more than 700 firefighters combating flames near the town of Castro Daire in the district.

Spain, Italy, France and Morocco have sent water-bombing aircraft.

Data from the European Forest Fire Information Service showed that large-scale blazes had burned an area of more than 105,000 hectares (405 square miles) since Saturday, making this year’s total of some 140,000 ha the widest burned area since 2017, when Portugal suffered two devastating waves of wildfires that killed more than 100 people.

That was well above the annual average of around 94,000 ha in the 2006-2023 period.

The Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service said total carbon emissions from the fires in Portugal hit a September record of 1.9 megatonnes through Sept. 18, nearly double the previous record for that month in 2003, and plumes of smoke were expected to reach western France in the coming days.

At least some of the dozens of fires across Portugal have been started by arsonists, motivated by possible commercial interest, spite or criminal negligence, authorities said. Police have arrested at least 14 people since Saturday suspected of starting fires.

(Additional reporting by Miguel Gutierrez and Sergio Goncalves, Writing by Andrei Khalip, Editing by Gareth Jones and Alex Richardson)