thousand firefighters
Forest fire in Portugal destroys thousands of hectares of land
08/06/2023 11:41 p.m
Fires destroy thousands of hectares of forest in Spain and Portugal. Several villages have to be evacuated. At least in Spain there is now an all-clear.
More than a thousand firefighters battled a forest fire in central Portugal that has already destroyed 7,000 hectares of land. More than 20,000 hectares are threatened, operations manager José Guilherme told journalists in Proença-a-Nova. In Spain, the situation in northern Catalonia and Andalusia was largely under control, local authorities said.
According to the information, eleven people were slightly injured in the Portuguese Castelo Branco. The fire broke out on Friday. Another 400 firefighters fought a fire in Odemira in the southwest, where four villages had to be temporarily evacuated. In some regions of Portugal it was more than 40 degrees Celsius on Sunday.
In Spain, a forest fire in Catalonia on the border with France remained under control despite freshening winds on Sunday. In the area on the Mediterranean coast, almost 600 hectares of land were destroyed by the flames. More than 130 people had to be evacuated. The fire broke out late Friday afternoon in the area, which is very popular with tourists.
Cause of fire still unclear
In a statement published on the Catalan government website, the fire brigade said isolated fires that flared up again at night were dealt with quickly. The wind blew in gusts of up to 113 kilometers per hour on Sunday night. The cause of the fire is still being determined, the Catalan forest authority said on the online network Twitter.
In the meantime, hundreds of people were stuck in villages or on campsites in the region. According to the Catalan civil defense, more than 4,000 people were temporarily without electricity, and ferry traffic between the border town of Portbou and the town of Figueras further south on the Catalan coast has been temporarily suspended. The coastal road between Portbou and the French border was also closed. Around 300 Catalan firefighters were deployed. They were assisted by French firefighters.
A second forest fire broke out on Saturday afternoon in Andalusia near the town of Bonares, about 70 kilometers west of Seville. After a night of fierce fighting to control the blaze, local forest fire agency Infoca tweeted that the fire was under control. The alarm condition has been cleared. More than 150 firefighters were on duty.
In the afternoon, authorities reported another fire in Puerto Real, further south on the Atlantic coast. In the region, which is also popular with tourists, at least five firefighting planes and helicopters were used to protect houses from the flames. Last year, 500 fires destroyed 300,000 hectares in Spain, which is increasingly plagued by heat waves and droughts. This year it is already 70,000 hectares.