Some 600 Portuguese firefighters are trying on Tuesday August 17 to come to the end of a fire which broke out on Monday in the tourist region of the Algarve, in the south of the country, causing the evacuation of about sixty people, a- we learned from the emergency services. A firefighter was hospitalized for burns, and two others were assisted on site for inhalation of fumes, a spokesperson for the regional civil protection command told AFP.
600 operacionais combatem incêndio em Castro Marim – https://t.co/bL7PWL9yxC https://t.co/H9UqTBbYQq
The fire, which had started in the early hours on Monday, in the town of Castro Marim, near the Spanish border, had been temporarily contained, before igniting again in the afternoon, reaching a perimeter in the evening of around thirty kilometers and an area estimated at the time at some 3,000 hectares. According to local media, the fire damaged at least one farm building, located on hills covered with orchards and brush.
Extension of the fire alarm
The flames then progressed south, towards the coast, prompting authorities to stop traffic on the highway that crosses the Algarve from east to west. This road axis remained cut Tuesday morning, while the fire progressed “With intensity” in an area of pine forest towards the town of Tavira, civil protection said. Faced with the scorching temperatures that have affected Portugal and Spain as well as other countries of the Mediterranean basin, the government of Lisbon decided on Monday to extend by forty-eight hours the fire alarm in force since Friday in most of the territory .
The fires that are increasing across the globe, as in recent weeks in Greece, Turkey and Algeria, are associated with various phenomena anticipated by scientists due to global warming. Struck in 2017 by the deadliest forest fires in its history, which killed more than a hundred people, Portugal had so far experienced a relatively calm summer in terms of fires.