MIGUEL PEREIRA DA SILVA/LUSA
Firefighters fight the flames during the fire that began near the village of Piodão, in Arganil, and spread to Silvares in Fundão.
Fire in Coimbra, which spread to Guarda and Castelo Branco, destroyed more area than what launched in Vilarinho, Lousã, in October 2017. Freches, Trancoso, entered the podium.
The fire that launched in Arganil on the 13th presents the largest burning area ever in Portugal, with 64 thousand hectares consumedaccording to the provisional report of the Institute for Conservation of Nature and Forests (ICNF).
The fire that started in Piódãoin the municipality of Arganil, in the district of Coimbra, and which resolution on Sunday, at the end of 11 days, it presents an area of 64,451 hectares, according to the Provisional National Report of the ICNF Forest Fire Information Management System (SGIF), to which Lusa agency had access.
The report, with the latest burned area update on Sunday, confirms that this fire has the largest burnt area ever in Portugal since there are records, surpassing the previous brand of fire that started in Villainin the municipality of Blackboardin October 2017, which had reached 53 thousand hectares.
The fire that began in Arganil also affected the municipalities of Pampilhosa da Serra and Oliveira do Hospital, in Coimbra, Seia, Guarda, and Castelo Branco, Fundão and Covilhã, in the district of Castelo Branco.
This Sunday, in the afternoon, the flames that began to draw land in Piódão constituted the only active fire of the significant occurrences recorded.
On Wednesday, the researcher of the University of Trás-os-Montes and Alto Douro (UTAD) Paulo Fernandes that the fire of Arganil could be the largest fire ever in Portugal, considering that that fire “”.
The fire began at dawn, from two rays, in a dwelling of difficult accesspropagating himself very quickly in the early hours, the fires expert and a member of the technical commissions of analysis to the large fires of 2017 told Lusa.
The fire has progressed in a territory that is difficult to reach and in a successively burning region, and there is “a continuum of increasingly homogeneous vegetation” that contributes to the progression of fire, he explained.
Freches, Trancoso: the third largest fire ever
The fire that started in Freches, in Trancosoon the 9th, will have consumed 49.324 hectares and is the second largest of this year and the third largest fire ever in Portugal.
The fire with the third largest burned area this year, according to the SGIF report consulted by Lusa, was Sátãowith 13,769 hectares, who joined that of Trancoso, forming a complex that affected 11 municipalities of the districts of Viseu and Guarda.
Freixo de Sword to the strap (11,697 hectares), the two fires of the Sabugal (10,539 and 10.403), another fire in Trancoso that began on the 14th (8,673), Guard (7.151) e Village (6,007) are also on the list of the 10 largest fires this year, all of these in August.
In the list of the 10 largest fires, there is only one fire in July, in Boat bridge (7,164), can be read in the report consulted by Lusa.
This year, according to the SGIF report, Already burned about 250 thousand hectares. Until Sunday, there were 80 large fires (with an area of more than 100 hectares) in Portugal this year, responsible for 97% of the total of the area burned in the country, concluded SGIF. According to the provisional report of SGIF, Guarda, Viseu and Castelo Branco are the districts with the most burning area.
Covilhã (20,257), Sabugal (18,726) and Trancoso (17,239 hectares) are the municipalities most affected by the fires in relation to the burned area, followed by being Manchre, Mêda, Arganil and Penedono, all municipalities with more than 10,000 burned hectares.
