Five wildfires still burning in Portugal

Forest fires were still blazing in Portugal today, although seven fires had been tamed.

The worst fire was burning in central Portugal in the village of Sao Frutuoso in Coimbra district. That fire, which has been blazing on several fronts for the past four days, has mobilised the largest number of firefighters in the country.

On Monday the fire destroyed 10 houses in the suburbs of the city of Coimbra, about 120 miles north of Lisbon.

About 50 more people were evacuated from their homes last night as flames threatened several villages, firefighters said. About 60 were evacuated earlier in the week.

The other four fires were ablaze in the Viseu and Viana do Castelo districts.

Altogether some 1,500 firefighters helped by 400 fire engines and 11 water tank aeroplanes and helicopters are fighting flames in Portugal. About 600 members of the armed forces were also deployed to areas where fire has already been controlled.

So far this year, wildfires have killed 15 people, 11 of them firefighters. On Monday, two more died, authorities said. An 88-year-old woman said to be suffering from Alzheimer’s disease was trapped by flames as she fled her home, and a 40-year-old man helping firefighters was run over by a fire truck and later died.

On Sunday Portugal asked the EU for help after it admitted it could no longer fight dozens of large blazes without external assistance. France, pain, Germany, Italy and The Netherlands all sent aid.

Weather services said the high temperatures of the past few days would drop slightly today, but highs of 36 degrees Celsius (97 Fahrenheit) were still forecast for some parts of the country.

Yesterday, the president of the National Authority for Forest Fires, Ferreira do Amaral, estimated that fires had burned through 445,000 acres so far, more than the total area burned last year, 320,370 acres). In 2003 – the worst for wildfires in the past two decades – the blazes burned one million acres.