Deadly forest fires wreak havoc in Portugal
NODEIRINHO, Portugal — Survivors emerged Monday with stories of leaping into water tanks and other dramatic escapes from the forest fires scorching central Portugal, and authorities came under mounting criticism for not doing more to prevent Portugal’s deadliest natural disaster in decades.
About 2,700 firefighters were still battling Monday to contain wildfires northeast of Lisbon, where one blaze that began Saturday killed 63 people, many of them as they tried to flee in their cars.
Water-dropping planes from Spain, France and Italy arrived as part of a European Union co-operation program, but they were grounded in some places because thick smoke limited visibility, officials said. That left firefighters — backed by fire engines and bulldozers — to do the heavy work on the ground in temperatures that approached 40 C.
Firefighters brought some of the blazes under control, but other wildfires still raced through inaccessible parts of the area’s steep hills, the Civil Protection Agency said.
Portugal is observing three days of national mourning after the deaths Saturday night near the town of Pedrogao Grande, 150 kilometres north of Lisbon.
Scorching weather, as well as strong winds and woods that are bone-dry after weeks with little rain, fuelled the blazes. Villages dot the scorched landscape.
In Nodeirinho, a hillside village of a few dozen people, 84-year-old Marta da Conceicao said residents called the fire services more than 20 times for help on Saturday.
“Nobody came. They were up in the mountain or somewhere else,” she said. “Here, it was up to God and the people.” As the flames licked at her, burning her leg, she and her elderly neighbours survived by jumping into a water storage tank.
A British man living nearby also had a hair-raising escape. As with more than half of the dead in Saturday’s blaze, Daniel Starling had jumped in his car and raced away as the flames bore down. He came across a family of four elderly people and picked them up. He said he drove around fallen trees and off the road in his quest to reach safety.
“We stopped at one point, because we did not know where to go, because there were flames everywhere. But I just carried on the only way that I knew. [It was] just flames over the car and the family and me screaming,” said the 56-year-old from Norwich, England.
They stopped when they came to a policeman at a junction. “The family,” Starling said, “got out and they were kissing the car.”
Officials say 47 of the dead in Saturday night’s blaze died on a road as they fled the flames.
Fire experts pointed to a series of shortcomings in Portugal’s strategy of tackling wildfires, even though the summer blazes have been happening for decades. There is a broad consensus that more work is needed on fire prevention, starting with forest clearing and the creation of fire breaks.
“In Portugal, the main factor in the scale of wildfires is the unbroken stretches of forest,” Paulo Fernandes, a forest researcher at Portugal’s Tras-os-Montes e Alto Douro University, told the AP.
But he noted that about 90 per cent of landowners have small holdings, making it difficult for authorities to keep tabs on them all.
Xavier Viegas, a wildfire expert at Portugal’s Coimbra University, said Portugal needs a long-term strategy, but changes in government often mean changes in forest and farm policies.
Emergency services have been criticized for not closing the road where most of the deaths occurred.