A forest fire in the center of Portugal swept away an area of 7,000 hectares and still has more than a thousand firefighters in action this Sunday, Civil Protection reported as the country experiences strong heat.
“It is estimated that the burned area is 7,000 hectares, but the potential of this fire could reach more than 20,000 hectares“, affirmed José Guilherme, commander of the rescue services in charge of the operations.
“Los more than a thousand operational personnel that will remain on the ground are currently trying to guarantee the stabilization of the fire, whose perimeter already reaches 60 kilometers,” said the commander during a press conference in the municipality of Proença-a-Nova.
He added that “it’s a very large area with many houses and isolated towns” and that firefighters were focusing their efforts on four hot spots from which the flames were likely to ignite again.
This forest fire, which broke out on Friday in the town of Castelo Branco, razed some 6,000 hectares in the first 24 hoursindicated Civil Protection in a first estimate of the burned area.