A fire has killed one person in the Aveiro region of northern Portugal, we learned on Wednesday from emergency services, which have mobilized forcefully for several days in the center of the country due to forest fires caused by scorching temperatures.
“Firefighters found a charred victim in the middle of the burned area” in a fire that broke out from Tuesday night to Wednesday in the municipality of Murtosa, head of the National Civil Protection Authority Jose Miranda, without further details.
According to the Corio da Manha newspaper, she was a woman in her fifties. The fire, which reportedly broke out in a cornfield, has since been brought under control.
Yet it is the center of the country worst hit by the wildfires that have hit Portugal since last Thursday and that flared up again on Tuesday afternoon, ignited by heat and strong winds.
Four major outbreaks on Wednesday morning mobilized more than 1,500 firefighters in the municipalities of Leiria, Pombal and Orem, located at the confluence of the provinces of Leiria and Santarém, just over a hundred kilometers from Lisbon.
The day before, several villages and about 300 people who were in the town of Freixianda, in the municipality of Orem had to be evacuated.
After traffic stopped until dawn, traffic in the meantime resumed on several roads, including the A1 motorway that connects Lisbon with northern Portugal.
Since Thursday, emergency services have identified about thirty minor injuries and at least ten damaged homes, according to a temporary report submitted by the Civil Protection.
In a country still reeling from the shock of the deadly 2017 fires that killed more than a hundred people, the government decided to strengthen the mobilization of emergency services and increase their powers, by issuing a “state of emergency” in less than Friday. .
On Wednesday, Portugal’s Meteorological Institute put 16 of the mainland’s 18 regions on red alert, double the number the day before.
Temperatures are expected to exceed 40 degrees Celsius in most of the country, rising to 46 degrees Celsius in the Santarem region.
