MADRID (Spain): Portugal suffered its first death Friday from the fires raging there, as Spain’s weather agency warned of a “very high to extreme risk” of more wildfires there during Europe’s intense heatwave.
Further east, Greece was still fighting blazes on one Aegean island, but the situation had improved for several other southern European countries.
Portugal’s President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa announced the death of the former mayor of the eastern town of Guarda, Carlos Damaso, who had been fighting the fires.
The president said he had cut short his holidays and returned to work, joining a meeting of the National Emergency and Civil Protection Authority.
For days now, several thousand firefighters have been battling fires in various parts of the country.
Portugal, like Spain, has invoked the EU’s civil protection mechanism to ask for help, requesting four firefighting aircraft to use until Monday, its presidency said on X.
In Spain, three people have died in the fires, including two young volunteers in their thirties who lost their lives trying to extinguish a blaze in the Castile and Leon area.
Much of the country has already endured nearly two weeks of high temperatures, and on Friday the searing heat spread to Cantabria, which had so far been spared.
Temperatures in the northwestern region were forecast to pass 40°C, said Aemet, the national weather agency.
The risk of fires on Friday and over the weekend through to Monday was “very high or extreme in most of the country”, it added.
Spain has endured a devastating wildfire season, with 389,193 acres reduced to ashes since the start of the year, according to the European Forest Fire Information System (EFFIS).
Yet that figure is still short of 2022, when more than 306,000 hectares went up in smoke.
On Thursday, France sent two water-bombing planes to help try to douse the flames in the northwestern region, where a dozen fires were still raging.
Meteorologists in France, meanwhile, put the southern department of Aude — where a devastating fire has already killed one person and injured several others — on red alert.
The fire, which broke out on August 5, has still not been fully extinguished and temperatures are expected to reach 40°C there on Saturday.
Further east, lower temperatures and reduced winds were helping to improve the situation in Greece and the Balkans, where rain was forecast in many parts of the region. – AFP
