Colossal pillars of fire, sweltering heat and lack of vision: A Portuguese journalist filmed and commented on his traversal of a violent fire while driving on the country’s main highway, plagued by a heat wave and bushfires.
“I wasn’t expecting this situation,” he breathes at the wheel of his car, Rui Tocayana, a reporter for Portuguese TSF radio, while filming with his phone a journey of about two kilometers on the A1 motorway, near Aveiro (Northern Balad).
On both sides of the path, plants devour a fierce night fire, still active on Thursday afternoon and fought by nearly 400 firefighters.
Among the twinkling flames several meters high, creating a fire tunnel, the journalist describes a “dangerous” scenario, explaining that he decided to close his car windows because they were “too hot” or that he saw “nothing” because of the smoke from the fire.
Finally, he managed to get past the fire and heaved a sigh of relief as 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 part of the A1 motorway.
For a week, Portugal was exposed to a heat wave that simultaneously reached other Western European countries, and Portugal recorded temperatures above 40 degrees Celsius in many areas and even exceeding 45 degrees Celsius in some places.
Last week’s fires, sparked by the intense heat, left about sixty dead and injured, forced the evacuation of 860 people, and destroyed or damaged about sixty houses.
According to data from EFFIS, the European Forest Fire Information System, the most significant fires have destroyed an area of about 13,500 hectares in Portugal in recent days.
