The fire that broke out in Arganil on August 13, passing into six municipalities and terrorising dozens of communities was finally ‘brought under control’ yesterday, Sunday – and is already recognised as the largest area ever fire in Portugal, with 64,451 hectares consumed, according to a provisional report from the Institute for Nature Conservation and Forests (ICNF).
The report, with the latest update on the area burned made yesterday, says this blaze surpasses the previous record set by the fire, in the dark days of 2017, that started in Vilarinho, in the municipality of Lousã, and devastated 53,000 hectares.
In the exhausting days of combat, this fire spread to the municipalities of Pampilhosa da Serra and Oliveira do Hospital (Coimbra district), Seia (Guarda), Castelo Branco, Fundão and Covilhã (Castelo Branco).
Readers will remember the passionate words of Oliveira do Hospital mayor Francisco Rolo who accused authorities of not listening to warnings, and basically letting the fire rip into the urban area of his municipality.
This has been a common theme this year: the inability of fire ‘command’ to properly manage situations, leaving them to run catastrophically out of control.
This year, according to the over ICNF report, around 250,000 hectares have already burned – and we are nowhere near ‘out of the wildfire season’
A fire that started in Freches, Trancoso, on August 9, consumed 49,324 hectares and is considered “the second largest this year and the third largest fire ever in Portugal”.
The fire with the third largest burned area this year was in Sátão, with 13,769 hectares, which joined the blaze in Trancoso, forming a complex that affected 11 municipalities in the districts of Viseu and Guarda.
Freixo de Espada à Cinta (11,697 hectares), the two fires in Sabugal (10,539 and 10,403), another fire in Trancoso that started on the 14th (8,673), Guarda (7,151) and Vila Real (6,007) are also on the list of the 10 largest fires this year, all of which occurred in August.
The list of the 10 largest fires includes only one fire that happened in July, in Ponte da Barca (7,164 hectares).
By Sunday, authorities had recorded 80 major fires (covering an area of more than 100 hectares) in Portugal this year, accounting for 97% of the total area burned in the country.
According to provisional report (provisional because there is still so much more of this summer to get through), Guarda, Viseu, and Castelo Branco are the districts with the most burned area.
Covilhã (20,257 hectares), Sabugal (18,726 hectares), and Trancoso (17,239 hectares) are the municipalities most affected by the fires in terms of area burned, followed by Sernancelhe, Mêda, Arganil, and Penedono – all of which have more than 10,000 hectares burned.
On Wednesday, Paulo Fernandes, a researcher at the University of Trás-os-Montes and Alto Douro (UTAD), predicted that the Arganil fire could be the largest fire ever in Portugal, given its potential to become a major blaze.
The fire started at dawn, from two lightning strikes, on a ridge that was difficult to access, spreading very quickly in the first few hours, the fire expert and member of the technical committees analysing the major fires of 2017 told the Lusa news agency.
The fire progressed in an area that is difficult to access and in a region that burns repeatedly, with “increasingly homogeneous vegetation” contributing to the spread of the fire, he explained.
As of time of writing, there are no ‘active blazes’ in Portugal. All the incidents are ‘in resolution’, involving hundreds of firefighters on the ground, controlling hotspots.
Source material: LUSA
