Fire of Arganil should be the largest ever in Portugal

The fire that began in Piódão, Arganil, on the 13th and that is still active, will be “most likely” the largest ever in Portugal, estimating an burned area of about 60,000 hectares.

So far, the largest fire in Portugal was in October 2017, in Vilarinho, in Lousã municipality, which accounted for more than 53,000 burned hectares.

But, according to expert Paulo Fernandes, the fire of Arganil that began in the district of Coimbra and extended to the districts of Castelo Branco and Guarda will have already consumed about 60 thousand hectares.

Interestingly, as the Lusa Agency, the fires expert and a member of the technical committees of analysis to the large fires of 2017, second place, second place (excluding this year’s fireworks) is the fire of Arganil, also in 2017, with about 38,000 burned hectares.

The researcher at the University of Trás-os-Montes and Alto Douro (UTAD) is estimated based on fires information for remote detection.

The area calculated by Paulo Fernandes is superior to the provisional data of the Forest Fire Information Management System (SGIF), which point to an burned area of 47,000 hectares (until Tuesday) and the European Forest Fire Information System (Effis), which records 57,596 hectares, with the last update made this Wednesday.

“Most likely it will be the biggest fire ever”the researcher bound, noting that there are fires “that are born to be great”, considering that the one of Arganil, started a week ago, “is one of these cases”.

Arganil – A very affected area

According to the investigator, the fire started at dawn, from two raysin a ridge, which led to a slower response and without the possibility of resorting to air media in the initial attack, “in a relatively inaccessible place.”

In a thunderstorm environment that generates winds, the fire “spread very quickly” in the early hours, noticed, considering that this is “the revenue to become a larger fire in hours or even days.”

All this, he found, happened in a “very complex territory”, not only for accessibility, but for the effect that the topography “has on the evolution of fire” region that burns successively, registering large fires in 1987, 2005 and 2017.

“We know that The occurrence of large fires fosters greater fires in the futurebecause it makes the landscape increasingly homogeneous and when the vegetation recovers, it grows simultaneously and we will have a continuum of increasingly homogeneous vegetation – and If there is something that fire likes is this homogeneity -”He explained.“ These fires occur when we have a lot of vegetation, with a relatively unstable atmosphere, where it is not really necessary wind and the fire does not have those very fast and sudden. Rather, it grows consistently over time, with a lot of dry biomass and, therefore, very difficult to fight, ”he explained.

Paulo Fernandes points and regrets the little prevention work that has been done since the 2017 fires.