WILDFIRES RAVAGE SPAIN AND PORTUGAL, SIX DEAD INCLUDING FIREFIGHTERS
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Agency Report
Wildfires sweeping across Spain and Portugal have claimed six lives, including two firefighters, as the Iberian Peninsula grapples with an intense heatwave.
Authorities confirmed on Monday that the latest fatalities occurred in separate road accidents involving firefighting teams. One firefighter in Spain died after his truck overturned on a steep forest road in Castile and Leon, while Portugal’s president, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, announced that a firefighter was killed on Sunday and two others seriously injured.
The death toll from the wildfires has now risen to four in Spain and two in Portugal. A former mayor in Guarda, eastern Portugal, also died last Friday while helping to combat the flames.
Spain remains on heatwave alert for the third consecutive week, with emergency services and army units deployed to battle multiple blazes in the northwest and west. The European Forest Fire Information System (EFFIS) estimates that over 70,000 hectares of land have been destroyed in Spain in recent days, nearly half of the country’s total wildfire losses this year.
Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, during a visit to one of the affected regions on Sunday, pledged to forge “a national pact” to confront the escalating climate crisis.
In Portugal, where nearly 185,000 hectares have been lost to fire since January, already surpassing last year’s total of 136,000 hectares around 2,000 firefighters were deployed on Monday. Half of them were stationed in the town of Arganil, one of the hardest-hit areas. The country is also expecting reinforcements, including two water-bombing aircraft, from the European Union.
The Iberian Peninsula has suffered a succession of extreme heatwaves and droughts this year, conditions that experts warn are being intensified by climate change.
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