‘Uncontrollable' wildfires kill mayor in Portugal
Nearly 4,000 firefighters have been deployed on several fire fronts in Portugal, with the government extending a state of alert until Sunday.
The government in Lisbon made a formal request for assistance from the EU's civil protection mechanism, a firefighting force that can be called upon by countries in need
The wildfires in Portugal claimed the life of Carlos Dâmaso, a former mayor of the town of Vila Franca do Deão. He died while helping to fight a blaze, officials said. He had been reported missing, and his body was found on Friday.
Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, Portugal's president, offered his 'heartfelt condolences'.
Authorities warned the fires were out of control because of a lack of resources, with villages encircled by flames and firefighters hampered by strong winds.
In Spain, Pedro Sanchez, the prime minister, said the country was at 'extreme risk' of new wildfires, particularly in the north and west. Firefighters were battling 14 major blazes across the country, where seven people have died as a result of the fires.
A recent heat wave brought temperatures exceeding 40C (104F) and is expected to last all weekend.
In the northern region of Galicia, several fires merged and forced the closure of roads. Rail services between Galicia and Madrid would remain suspended 'until further notice', transport officials said.
Police arrested two men on suspicion of starting fires in Castille and León.
Wildfires that have raged across Spain have so far this year burned 610 square miles – an area roughly as big as London.
In Portugal, Spain and Italy, Friday was the Feast of the Assumption, a major Catholic holiday in which people flock to the beach and hold family gatherings.
In the past week there have also been devastating fires in France, Bulgaria, Albania and Montenegro.
In Greece, a wildfire burned out of control for a fourth day on the island of Chios, prompting the evacuation of more villages. Two water-dropping planes and two helicopters were operating in the north of the Aegean island, a popular tourist destination.
Firefighters were given some respite with a lull in the high winds that had been spreading the flames.
A firefighter was injured near the city of Patras after falling into a ravine while battling a blaze. He was rescued by colleagues and taken to hospital with injuries to his back and legs.
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The Guardian
2 hours ago
- The Guardian
‘Unlike any other kind of fear': wildfires leave their mark across Spain
On Saturday, the people of Paüls will celebrate the feast of their patron saint, Sant Roc, with a mass, followed by a communal meal eaten at stone tables, jota folk dances and a profound and lingering sense of relief. Last month's wildfire – which turned the night skies a hellish orange, blackened the surrounding hills and devoured 3,300 hectares (8,154 acres) of land – was a near-disaster that stirred memories of the 2009 blaze in nearby Horta de Sant Joan that killed five firefighters. 'People were afraid that everything would burn and that they'd lose everything,' says Enric Adell, the mayor of the small Catalan mountain town. 'They were scared of getting trapped and not being able to get out of the village.' The fear of a fire like that, he adds, is unlike any other kind of fear. 'We've been through a pandemic and a nationwide power cut and torrential rains, but a fire on this scale was something else – as was the aftermath,' says Adell. In the hills above the village square, the charred trees are a reminder of what could have happened without the bravery of hundreds of firefighters, one of whom, Antonio Serrano, lost his life. Changing winds and sheer luck also played a part. 'When a fire hits,' says the mayor, 'it really leaves its mark.' This summer's fires have already left their mark across the length and breadth of Spain, from Galicia and Castilla y León in the north-west to Catalonia in the north-east, from the smart suburbs outside Madrid to Extremadura in the south-west, and all the way down to the beaches of Tarifa in Andalucía. As well as panic and the increasingly familiar tang of smoke, this year's fires have brought with them a sense of deja vu. The hot, deadly summer of 2022 yielded images that laid bare Spain's huge vulnerability as the effects of the climate emergency became increasingly plain. Footage that went around the world that July showed Ángel Martín, a 53-year-old man from Tábara in Castilla y León, using one of his excavators to try to stop the fires in the Sierra de la Culebra reaching the town. In the video, the machine is engulfed by the flames before Martín runs out of the inferno, the clothes burning off his frame. Martín, a much-loved figure in Tábara, suffered burns to 80% of his body and died in hospital three months later. Three years on, Spain is once again on the defensive. 'The fires are one of the parts of the impact of that climate change, which is why we have to do all we can when it comes to prevention,' the country's environment minister, Sara Aagesen, told Cadena Ser radio this week. 'Our country is especially vulnerable to climate change. We have resources now but, given that the scientific evidence and the general expectation point to it having an ever greater impact, we need to work to reinforce and professionalise those resources.' As politicians engage in blame games, experts warn, once again, that all the bickering over the number of water-dumping planes misses the point. The current spate of fires, they add, was entirely predictable and underlines the need for a fundamental rethink of land use and management in a continent that is on the frontline of the climate emergency. 'This year's fires are basically on the same level as those we saw in 2022 and 2023,' says Marc Castellnou, the head of forestry for the Catalan regional fire department and a fire analyst at the University of Lleida. 'Since 2017, we've seen this change towards more extreme fires … It's nothing new – and it's happening because climate change is bringing higher temperatures for much longer periods.' The dynamics are not hard to discern. If you have annual heatwaves that arrive one after the other – and last longer and longer – in a country where decades of rural depopulation have left huge areas of land untended, overgrown or given over to homogenous cultivation, then you will have massive fires that are getting harder to fight. As one Spanish scientist noted earlier this week: 'We have all the ingredients for the molotov cocktail we're seeing right now.' Cristina Montiel, a professor at Madrid's Complutense University and an expert in forest fires and land use, says that while Spain's firefighters and other emergency services are doing an 'extraordinarily magnificent' job that is keeping far greater disasters at bay, the problem lies with society as a whole. Despite the annual fires and the abundance of evidence, she says, 'it turns out that we are not – and we do not want to be – aware of the danger in which we're living'. If we were even a little aware, she adds, 'we would take the measures and decisions to protect ourselves'. Fifty years ago, says Montiel, most forest fires were intentional. But today's forest fires are increasingly caused by accidents or negligence and are spreading so voraciously because of two factors: landscape change and climate change. It is an explosive combination. This year's heavy spring rains led to an increase in plant growth that has now been dried out by successive heatwaves, leaving all that combustible vegetation, much of it in neglected areas, ready to serve as fuel for the fires. The situation is further complicated by the phenomenon of 'flash droughts', which can quickly dry out even well-irrigated agricultural land, and which are likely to become more common as global heating continues. Paüls is a case in point. Its population has dwindled over the decades and fewer and fewer people in the area work the land because of the shrinking economic rewards. 'If there were 100 people working the land before, now there are 30,' says Adell. 'If the same policies continue and things remain as hard as they are, then in a few years, there'll be almost no one.' Sign up to This is Europe The most pressing stories and debates for Europeans – from identity to economics to the environment after newsletter promotion All those years of abandonment had left ravines, gullies and pine forests overgrown and made them into temperature-activated timebombs. Last month's fire, says the mayor, was simply uncontrollable: 'We saw that there was no way of stopping it.' If there is much truth in the idea that preparation is all – and in the old maxim that 'fires are put out in winter' – the challenge now lies in undoing decades of neglect and bad planning that have seen the landscape forgotten and the appearance of housing developments in hazardous places. But Montiel cautions that the much-needed rethink will be neither quick nor easy. 'If things took a turn for the worse 50 years ago, we can now start changing them for the better,' she says. 'But you can't think that starting to change things now will pay off within two summers because that isn't true. These things are processes.' There are, however, already some signs that the message is getting through. After the Horta de Sant Joan fire 16 years ago, a group of shepherds approached the Catalan fire department to ask what they could do to prevent more blazes. The result was the Ramats de Foc (Fire Flocks) scheme, in which shepherds coordinate with firefighters to graze flocks of sheep and goats in areas with a high density of undergrowth and therefore high risk of fire. In areas cleared by the ruminants, firefighters have better access and, as there is less undergrowth, it is also easier to bring fires under control should they break out. 'We don't need more helicopters or firefighters,' says Marc Arcarons, who coordinates the initiative, which was launched in Girona in 2017 under the aegis of the not-for-profit Pau Costa Foundation. 'We could buy 200 more helicopters and it won't solve the problem. It's all about prevention and management.' The scheme also helps shepherds increase their existing incomes as those who participate can sell their meat or cheese at a premium as certified Ramats de Foc, so consumers know the produce is contributing to the preservation of the environment and the survival of traditional agriculture. About 120 shepherds have joined the project, which covers about 8,000 hectares (20,000 acres) in Catalonia. Similar schemes are planned or under way in the Canary Islands and Andalucía. Arcarons says that depopulation – and decreasing dependence on woodlands for building material and grazing since the 1960s – has caused what was once a patchwork of vineyards, olive groves and wheat fields to revert to dense forest. Fast-growing and highly flammable pines dominated, undergrowth flourished and this, combined with climate change and more frequent and longer periods of drought, has led to fires that are extremely difficult to control. 'It's like a chimney,' says Arcarons. 'If you keep throwing wood on the fire eventually the chimney will catch fire and the house will burn down.' Castellnou agrees that without adapting our landscapes to the realities of climate breakdown, we are sealing our fate. 'There's no point talking about more aeroplanes,' he says. 'If we limit our capacity for extinguishing fires by thinking we just need enough equipment to put them out then we're creating an unsustainable, artificial situation for summer after summer of extreme weather.'
Sky News
4 hours ago
- Sky News
Why wildfires in Spain and Portugal are having an impact on weather in the UK
Smoke from wildfires in Spain and Portugal has brought hazy conditions to the UK, breaking up last week's spell of very hot weather, forecasters have said. In a post on the X social media platform on Saturday, the Met Office said: "Smoke from wildfires in Spain and Portugal, plus Saharan dust, has drifted over the UK." The Met Office said the UK should expect "enhanced sunsets and sunrises in the coming days - deeper reds & oranges thanks to light scattering." The latest forecast where you are Sky weather producer Kirsty McCabe said "the very hot weather is easing, thanks to a strengthening easterly wind as well as cloudier skies". She said Saturday's haze is down to "the terrible wildfires that have been raging across Spain and Portugal, and the smoke has made its way to our shores, along with some Saharan dust". While the smoke particles shouldn't affect the UK's air quality, she said they will "enhance the orange and red colours of our sunsets and sunrises". Wildfire smoke affects the colour of the sky through processes known as Rayleigh scattering and Mie scattering, she explained. On reaching the Earth's atmosphere, the sun's light bumps into tiny molecules of nitrogen and oxygen, which scatter or deflect the light. Kirsty McCabe said Mie scattering occurs "when the [smoke] particles are much larger and closer to the wavelengths of light. "That means the smoke particles in the air scatter all colours of light more equally, leading to a hazy or milky appearance of the sun and sky." Rayleigh scattering sees the shorter wavelengths of light, blues and violets, scattered most strongly, while red light, having the longest wavelength, is scattered the least, she explained. "At dusk and dawn, the sun's rays travel through a greater distance of atmosphere to reach our eyes, so the blue light has been scattered even more. "With most of the shorter blue and violet wavelengths filtered out, along with some green and yellow, that leaves us with the warmer hues of the reds and oranges." Met Office meteorologist Greg Dewhurst said the haze "will hang around for the next few days". He predicted temperatures in the mid to high twenties, rising to 28C in some parts, with hazy sunshine moving from southwest England into Wales and Northern Ireland. At least seven people have died in wildfires in Spain as firefighters battled 14 major blazes on Friday, fanned by strong southerly winds and high temperatures from a nearly two-week heatwave. An area the size of London has been destroyed by wildfires so far this year, with western Spain especially badly affected. Southern Europe is having one of the worst summers for wildfires in 20 years, with France, Greece, Turkey and Albania among the countries affected. While Southern Europe lived through wildfires, droughts and heatwaves long before humans started to change the climate by burning fossil fuels, hotter global temperatures can supercharge some of the conditions for these types of extreme weather, according to climate scientists.
The Sun
5 hours ago
- The Sun
Saharan dust cloud & Spain wildfire smoke blanket UK in Met Office satellite map – as temps to hit 30C this weekend
BRITAIN'S skies are not as bright blue today - and the Met Office has revealed the reason why, though there's a potential bonus coming. It's thanks to smoke from wildfires in Spain and Portugal, as well as Saharan dust that's "drifted over the UK". 5 5 5 But there is a potential upside - the national weather agency said Brits can expect "enhanced sunsets and sunrises in the coming days", adding: "Deeper reds and oranges thanks to light scattering." It comes as thousands of people are expected to flock to beaches across this weekend with forecasts of up to 29C on Sunday. As Brits head into Saturday evening, the forecaster predicts it will be a mainly dry night with the clearest skies appearing in the west. While most parts of the UK will remain dry, it's expected that some light rain will fall across the Shetland Islands. Cloud will build up across central and eastern areas, but will be less extensive than Friday night. Winds in the southwest will remain strong across some parts. Low cloud will gradually retreat towards the North Sea coastal areas as Sunday day gets underway, leaving most places to bask in plenty of sunshine. The strong winds in the southwest though will continue. While it will be very warm once again for most people, it will feel fresher along the eastern coast. Looking further ahead into Monday and the early part of the working week it looks to be more of the same. Little-known iPhone trick helps you dodge surprise rain with last-minute warning Any early morning cloud in the east will break up, giving way to sunny spells. Western parts could see some showers but it will be the warmest part of the country with winds easing off. Yellow warnings have been put in place for various areas of the country by the UK Health Security Agency. This includes Yorkshire and the Humber, the East and West Midlands, London and the South East, the South West and the east of England. Heat health alerts have also been extended into next week for much of England. The hot weather has resulted in a surge of vehicle breakdowns, the RAC reports. They have received 10 per cent more call outs this week when compared to the same period of Monday to Thursday last week. The yellow warnings are set to remain in place until 6pm on Monday, August 18. 5 5
