According to civil protection, 13 larger and dozens of smaller fires are currently raging in Portugal alone. Tourist and larger residential areas are currently not in danger. However, the fires favored by heat and drought are always destructive. According to the ICNF, the blaze destroyed more than 25,000 hectares of land in just one week. A total of around 1,000 people are currently trying to contain the flames in Portugal.
On Friday, the fight against the fires claimed one fatality when the pilot of a fire-fighting plane died when the plane crashed. The single-engine seaplane crashed on Friday afternoon for unknown reasons near the town of Vila Nova de Foz Coa in northeastern Portugal, about 200 kilometers east of Porto, the newspaper “Publico” reported, citing civil defense.
The 38-year-old pilot Andre Serra could only be recovered dead. “He will be remembered for his courage, his bravery and his commitment,” said the President’s Office in Lisbon in recognition of the pilot who died.
Like neighboring Spain, Portugal suffers from temperatures that peak at over 40 degrees. A total of 33 forest fires were recorded in Spain on Saturday, 14 of which were out of control. Near Malaga, 2,300 people had to leave their homes in the town of Alhaurin el Grande because of the approaching flames, the newspaper “El Pais” reported.
Tourists in Bibione fled into the sea
In Italy, the emergency services are also fighting fires on several fronts. In the northern Italian Adriatic seaside resort of Bibione, tourists fled into the sea because of a forest fire and were rescued there by the coast guard. According to media reports, the fire in the area popular with holidaymakers broke out on Friday afternoon. Several fire brigades and a fire-fighting helicopter fought the flames on the border between the Veneto and Friuli-Venezia Giulia regions. The operation continued on Saturday.
Extremwetter
Although individual extreme events cannot be directly traced back to a specific cause, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change it is clear that extreme weather events such as floods, storms and heat are becoming more frequent and more intense as a result of the climate crisis. This means: Precipitation and storms are getting heavier, heat waves are getting hotter and droughts are getting drier.
Videos showed trees blazing and thick smoke rising into the sky, visible from miles away. “We hope that it will not be revoked in the coming hours, but there should be no missing people,” San Michele al Tagliamento deputy mayor Pierluigi Grosseto told Ansa news agency. The police are investigating the cause of the fire. Because of the drought, Grosseto says it’s possible the flames were self-igniting. The forces fought four fires.
In the municipality of Gereut (Frassilongo) in Trentino, northern Italy, 90 firefighters, two helicopters and two fire-fighting aircraft responded to a forest fire in an area of around 70 hectares. Firefighting continued on Saturday. The civil defense warned not to approach the area. The hiking and skiing area is east of Trento. In Tuscany, the Lucca fire brigade had to put out fires in a burning olive grove on Friday. Forest and bush fires were also raging in Sicily and Sardinia, and fire-fighting aircraft were used to fight them.
“Very high forest fire risk” in Greece
The Greek Ministry for the Climate Crisis and Civil Protection also warned of a “very high risk of forest fires” in five regions in Greece on Saturday. Warning level four (out of five) applies to the Attica region with the capital Athens and the islands of Euboea, Crete, Chios and Samos. The authorities are appealing to people not to handle fire outdoors under any circumstances.
The emergency services were able to bring the forest fire under control, which has been raging on Crete south of the port city of Rethymno since Friday. The Greek fire brigade announced that they had been fighting the flames all night. Six villages have been evacuated. Although the fire came close to the settlements, no houses were damaged, the municipality’s mayor, Agios Vasilios, told Skai on Saturday.
12,000 people brought to safety on the Atlantic coast
Also on the French Atlantic coast south of Bordeaux, after days of extinguishing work, there is hope that one of the two large forest fires will calm down. The area burned near Teste-de-Buch did not increase overnight, the Gironde prefecture announced on Saturday. However, the fire is not yet under control and there is a high risk that it will flare up again. The mayor of the place, Patrick Davet, told the French broadcaster France Info: “The situation is worrying, but we have a lot of hope.”
The situation is different with the second major forest fire in the area. The Landiras fire burned about 1,000 more hectares of land during the night. The situation remains unfavorable, winds bring the fire to the southeast. Firefighters have been on duty since Tuesday to extinguish the two major forest fires. In total, more than 9,600 hectares of land were destroyed. As a precaution, more than 12,000 people were evacuated from their homes and holiday homes.
A dead man in Morocco
The situation is also tense south of the Mediterranean. One person died in forest fires in Morocco. Hundreds of residents of the northern regions have meanwhile been rescued from the flames in several villages, the TV station al-Jazeera reported on Saturday.
Around 500 families in the provinces of Larache and Taza had already been brought to safety on Thursday. Hundreds of firefighters and members of the civil defense, army and police are fighting the fires, which are also raging in the provinces of Ouezzane and Tetouan and are fanned by strong winds. In the past few days, temperatures of almost 45 degrees have been reached in the North African country.