In a statement released today, the Territorial Command of Castelo Branco announced that an arrest was made on Friday in Castelo Novo by military personnel from the Alpedrinha Territorial Post.
“During a patrol action in a forested area, the military detected the suspect hunting on land adjacent to a burnt area, where the fire was still ongoing.”
The GNR reported that the suspect “was immediately arrested” and a firearm and ammunition were seized.
The detainee was formally charged and the facts communicated to the Judicial Court of Fundão.
The GNR reminded that hunting is prohibited in areas affected by fires and in adjacently confined terrain, within a 250-meter range, during the fire and for the subsequent 30 days.
The fire, which broke out on the 13th in Arganil, Coimbra district, also spread to the municipalities of Pampilhosa da Serra and Oliveira do Hospital (Coimbra district), Seia (Guarda), and Covilhã, Castelo Branco, and Fundão (Castelo Branco).
The Fundão City Council reported that the fire consumed over 10,000 hectares in the municipality, although these figures are still provisional.
The fire that began in Piódão, in the Arganil municipality (Coimbra district), and was brought under control on Sunday after 11 days, has a burnt area of 64,451 hectares, according to a provisional national report from the Forest Fire Information Management System (SGIF) of ICNF, accessed by the Lusa agency.
The report, with the latest burnt area update made on Sunday, confirms that this fire has the largest burnt area ever recorded in Portugal, surpassing the previous record of the fire that began in Vilarinho, in the Lousã municipality, in October 2017, which reached 53,000 hectares.
According to the SGIF provisional report, Guarda, Viseu, and Castelo Branco are the districts with the most burnt area.
Covilhã (20,257 hectares), Sabugal (18,726 hectares), and Trancoso (17,239 hectares) are the most affected municipalities in terms of burnt area, followed by Sernancelhe, Mêda, Arganil, and Penedono, all municipalities with more than 10,000 hectares burnt.
On Wednesday, Paulo Fernandes, a researcher at the University of Trás-os-Montes and Alto Douro (UTAD), already anticipated that the Arganil fire might be the largest ever in Portugal, considering that the fire had the conditions to grow significantly.
The fire started in the early morning from two lightning strikes on a ridge difficult to access, spreading very rapidly in the first hours, stated the fire expert and member of the technical committees for analyzing the great fires of 2017 to the Lusa agency.
The fire progressed in a difficult-to-access region with a history of repeated burning, where “a more homogeneous continuum of vegetation” contributed to the fire’s spread, he explained.
