Un avion bombardier d’eau qui combattait les feux de forêt au Portugal s’est écrasé vendredi en début de soirée près de Vila Nova de Foz Coa, dans la région de Guarda, provoquant la mort du pilote, son a unique occupant Civil Protection. “At this point, we don’t have any details of what happened,” National Civil Protection Commander Andre Fernandez told the media.
The aircraft was a medium-sized FireBoss type. Portuguese Prime Minister Antonio Costa responded on his Twitter account, saying: “It is with great sadness that I learn of the death of the pilot of the plane that crashed while setting fire.”
In this country suffering from a week of scorching temperatures and a series of fires, emergency services identified dozens of active fires Friday evening, which mobilized more than 900 firefighters. At the same time, also in northern Portugal, one of the most alarming fires broke out in the municipality of Baiao, a mountainous area in the Porto region, upstream from the Douro, the mighty river that crosses it.
30,000 hectares of smoke crashed
Before a slight dip on Friday, temperatures had reached 47 degrees the previous day in northern Portugal, a record high for July in that country.
Since the start of 2022, smoke has been emitted from just over 30,000 hectares in Portugal, the highest number on July 15 since 2017, a year marked by deadly forest fires that killed nearly 100 people.
On Wednesday in Greece, two of four crew members of a helicopter involved in fighting a forest fire on the island of Samos died when the plane crashed into the sea.
