Thousands of firefighters backed by waterbombing aircraft and military personnel battled dozens of wildfires across Spain and Portugal on Monday, August 18, as the death toll increased to six since outbreaks began. The Iberian peninsula has been particularly affected by heatwave-fuelled forest fires and drought linked to climate change that have hit southern Europe.
Two firefighters were killed in road accidents on Sunday, one in each country, taking the death toll to two in Portugal and four in Spain. Firefighting aircraft from France, Italy, Slovakia and the Netherlands are helping Spain, while Portugal is receiving air support from Sweden and Morocco.
More than 343,000 hectares of land have been destroyed this year in Spain, setting a new national record, according to the European Forest Fire Information System. The previous record of 306,000 hectares was set in the same period three years ago. The fires, now in their second week, were concentrated in the northwest regions of Galicia, Castile and Leon, and Extremadura.
In Ourense province of Galicia, signs of the fires were everywhere, from ashen forests and blackened soil to destroyed homes, with thick smoke forcing people to wear facemasks. Officials in Castile and Leon said a firefighter died on Sunday night when the water truck he was driving flipped over on a steep forest road and down a slope. Two other volunteer firefighters have died in Castile and Leon, while a Romanian employee of a riding school north of Madrid lost his life trying to protect horses from the fire.
In Portugal, President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa said a firefighter died in a traffic accident that left two colleagues seriously injured on Sunday. A former mayor in the eastern town of Guarda died on Friday while trying to tackle a fire. Some 2,000 firefighters were deployed across northern and central Portugal on Monday, with about half of them concentrated in the town of Arbanil. Some 216,000 hectares of land have been destroyed across the country since the start of the year.