The fire that broke out on Friday in Castelo Branco, registers a burned area of 6,000 hectares in that municipality and in Proença-a-Nova, said today the Regional Command of Civil Protection of the Center.
“The estimate, at this moment, is six thousand hectares of burned area, which is a reduced area for what is the potential of this fire,” said the second Regional Commander of Emergency and Civil Protection of the Center, Jody Rato, who spoke to journalists at a ‘briefing’ on the state of play of that fire.
The fire broke out on Friday afternoon, in the town of Carrascal, in Castelo Branco, having later progressed to the neighboring municipality of Proença-a-Nova.
At the moment, the fire has “several hot spots” and two active fronts that cause “concern” to the operatives, due to “the difficulties of access and orography, in a difficult territory to apply effective combat techniques”, he explained.
Since the beginning of the morning, it has been possible to maintain “air means” permanently, he added, stressing that, so far, there has been no evacuated village, only “temporary withdrawal of people” from some localities where the flames were close.
“We have a defined strategy, we are positioning human resources and track machines, which are playing a very important role in consolidating the perimeter of the fire, which will be a job done during the day and during the night, and we hope to quickly resolve a situation that is complicated”, said Jody Rato.
Asked about the possibility of any of the fronts advancing to neighboring counties, the official stressed that the operatives are making “every effort to prevent this from happening”, admitting, however, the risk of this arising.
Jody Rato also called on people to avoid “circulating in areas bordering the fire”, in order to facilitate the work of the operatives on the ground.
At 14:05, the fire mobilized 1,103 operatives, supported by 361 vehicles and 16 aerial means, according to the Civil Protection page.
