▲ A firefighter battles a forest fire outside Sever do Vouga, northern Portugal.Photo Ap
AFP, AP and Europa Press
The newspaper La Jornada
Friday, September 20, 2024, p. 23
Paris. The forest fires that have been ravaging Portugal for a week have hit by far a record carbon emissions for a month of September, announced yesterday the European observatory Copernicus, which predicts that the smoke will reach Spain and France between tomorrow and Sunday.
With improved weather conditions, Portugal hopes to put an end to the fires that have devastated tens of thousands of hectares of vegetation in the north and centre of the country since September 14, killing five people, four of them firefighters.
An estimate published the day before yesterday by Copernicus indicated that at least 15,000 hectares of vegetation had been devastated.
According to data from the European Forest Fire Information System, the total area affected amounts to 100,000 hectares, 10 times more than the area burned since the beginning of the northern summer.
The smoke headed towards the Atlantic, but the plumes are expected to move northwards over the Iberian Peninsula, across the Bay of Biscay and into western France in the coming days..
Meanwhile, more than a thousand people have been evacuated and at least two are missing following the heavy flooding caused by the rains that have not stopped in recent days in northern Italy, in line with those that have also inundated part of central Europe.
The authorities have declared a red alert for the entire Emilia Romagna region, where bad weather has caused rivers such as the Lamone to overflow their banks, landslides and flooded roads. In the town of Bagnocavallo, in the province of Ravenna, two people are still missing, reports the Adnkronos agency.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen yesterday promised greater flexibility in using EU funds and mobilising up to 10 billion euros of cohesion funds to deal with flooding.
Speaking from Poland alongside the Prime Ministers of Poland, Donald Tusk; Slovakia, Robert Fico; the Czech Republic, Petr Fiala; and the Chancellor of Austria, Karl Nehammer, the German conservative stressed the solidarity of the European Union with the countries affected by the natural disaster, through material aid with the Civil Protection Mechanism but also with funds to promote the repair and reconstruction of damaged buildings and infrastructure.