Portugal in the grip of the heat wave and forest fires – Actu Orange

AFP, published on Sunday July 10, 2022 at 8:57 p.m. Up to 2,800 firefighters mobilized on Sunday to try to put an end to a series of forest fires which ravaged Portugal, where scorching temperatures prompted the government to step up the mobilization relief by decreeing a “state of contingency”. The most important outbreak had been raging since Thursday in the Ourém region (center) and alone mobilized nearly 700 firefighters. last house in the village (…) Up there everything burned,” Donzilia Marques told AFP, pointing to the hills between her hamlet of Travessa de Almogadel and the town of Freixianda. Evacuated from her home the day before evening, this 76-year-old retiree was able to return to it on Sunday morning, relieved to discover that no house had been damaged there. The fire, which would have ravaged at least 1,500 hectares of vegetation according to a first estimate, however destroyed at least least two dwellings, s according to the emergency services, which reported other temporary evacuations of villages threatened by the flames. it also at the confluence of the districts of Leiria and Santarém. ‘after an assessment provided Sunday evening by the national commander of civil protection, André Fernandes.- “Extreme weather peak” – For the third day in a row, peacekeepers had to face more than a hundred departures fire across the country, while “the peak of extreme weather” is yet to come, said Fernandes. Thermometers have already reached 44 degrees Celsius in places, and the meteorological institute The Portuguese EU expects temperatures to continue to rise until the middle of next week. After this “high risk” weekend, according to Prime Minister Antonio Costa, who canceled a trip to Mozambique to monitor the situation as closely as possible , the Portuguese government has thus decided to decree a “state of contingency” between Monday and Friday, to raise the level of mobilization of the emergency services and the restrictions they can impose. the European Union to activate its common civil protection mechanism, obtaining the dispatch of two water bomber planes stationed in Spain. “Worst combination of factors” since the fires of June and October 2017, which killed more than a hundred people, President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa argued that the level of emergency preparedness was “not comparable”. the s fires that are multiplying across the globe are associated with various phenomena anticipated by scientists due to global warming. The increase in temperature, the multiplication of heat waves and the drop in precipitation in places is an ideal combination for the development of fires.