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More than a thousand firefighters have been mobilized against several fronts in hard-to-reach areas of the Castelo Branco region, some 225 km northeast of the capital, Lisbon. The death toll is currently twenty wounded, twelve civilians and eight firefighters, including one seriously.
The night from Saturday to Sunday has been long in Portugal. More than half of the area burned by fires tonight would now be under control, according to the commander of civil protection. But the fight is not over, some homes are stoked by the wind and come back.
Six regions in central and southern Portugal have been placed at maximum alert level. On site, the Portuguese army came to help the hundreds of firefighters. Eight bombers and more than two hundred vehicles were mobilized.
Copernicus, European Earth monitoring program, publishes a map of the location of fires in Portugal
???? New map: [# EMSR372] SERT: FEP Product, Release 1, Release 1, RTP Map # 01 [v1, 1: 50000]
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Civil Protection knows that at this time fires can turn to disaster quickly. In 2017, in the same region, sixty people died in a fire that was much larger.
However, the local media already relay the cries of despair of the inhabitants of some remote countryside, which had to wait several hours for the arrival of firefighters. Vice-President of Vila de Rei County denounced the glaring lack of means that slows access to the most remote hamlets.
The police do not rule out the crime and arrested a 55-year-old man suspected of having started the fire. An investigation has been opened.