Fires in Portugal have destroyed more than 13,000 hectares in recent days.
Huge pillars of fire, intense heat and lack of visibility: a Portuguese journalist filmed and commented on his crossing on Wednesday evening of a violent fire while he was driving on the country’s main highway, in the grip of a heat wave and wildfires.
“I did not expect this situation,” breathes at the wheel of his car, Rui Tocayana, a reporter for Portuguese radio TSF while filming with his phone a trip of about two kilometers on the A1 motorway, near Aveiro (North).
On both sides of the path, plants are devoured by an intense nighttime fire, still active Thursday afternoon and being fought by nearly 400 firefighters.
13,500 hectares burned in Portugal
Between the crackling of flames several meters high and the formation of a tunnel of fire, the journalist describes a “dangerous” scenario, explaining that he decided to close his car windows because it was “too hot”, or she could see “nothing”. Because of the smoke from the fire.
Finally, he managed to get past the fire and breathed a sigh of relief when he approached the exit that would allow him to reach Aveiro from Porto (North). A few minutes after it passes, traffic will pause on this section of the A1 motorway.
Portugal was exposed to a heat wave for a week, which at the same time reached other Western European countries, and Portugal recorded temperatures above 40 degrees Celsius in many areas, and even exceeded 45 degrees Celsius in some places. Last week’s fires, fanned by the intense heat, killed one person, injured about sixty, evacuated 860 people, and damaged or destroyed about sixty homes.
According to data from the European Forest Fire Information System (EFFIS), the most important fires have destroyed an area of about 13,500 hectares in Portugal in recent days.
