In the last three months, the rural firefighting operation was at its maximum capacity, with 12,917 operational personnel, 3,062 teams, 2,833 vehicles and 60 aerial assets.

In a summer in which the drought rate was the highest since 2005 and in which there were very high temperatures, the risk of fire was high, which led the Government to declare, in July, for the first time, a calamity situation across the continent.

This season, thousands of hectares burned, namely in the Serra da Estrela region, a fire that lasted 11 days in August and consumed more than 28 thousand hectares, of which about 22 thousand was in the natural park.

The fire in Serra da Estrela is already considered the worst the country has faced in the last five years, but this summer there were also other large fires that lasted for days and also consumed thousands of hectares and caused extensive damage, such as the one in Murça (Vila Real) and Pombal (Leiria).

In total and since January 1st, 10,155 fires have broken out that consumed 109,846 hectares of forests, the largest area burned since 2017 and the fourth highest value in the last decade, after 2017, 2016, 2013 and 2012.

Deaths

This summer is also marked by the death of four people, a pilot of a firefighting plane, an elderly couple who fled the flames and had a car accident and a firefighter from Óbidos who died of a sudden illness during fire fighting.

This year, 151 people were arrested for the crime of forest fire, more than twice as many as in 2021, 70 of them by the National Republican Guard and 81 by the Judiciary Police.