The mayor of Odemira, Hélder Guerreiro (PS), estimated today that the damage caused by the fire that broke out in the area exactly a month ago and affected various sectors of the economy could be around 10 million euros.
In the tourism sector alone, “we’re talking about more than 2.7 million euros in direct losses, either because there were cancellations” or because there were “people [who] left their own tourist accommodation,” the mayor told Lusa.
According to the Socialist, of this 2.7 million euro total loss in tourism, “0.1 million were in returns from people who took early departures because of the fire; 0.4 million in cancellations and 2.2 million in physical damage” to tourist accommodation affected by the fire.
Despite still “finishing the process” of surveying the damage caused by the fire that “affected a fairly large number of economic activities” in the municipality of Odemira, in the district of Beja, Hélder Guerreiro said that the total amount could be around 10 million euros.
“If it’s 2.7 million euros in tourism, I believe it could be as much as 10 million euros in terms of forestry, land-use planning and [destroyed] houses,” he estimated.
“We now need to add some damage, including to the town hall, which had quite a lot of signage [destroyed]. It won’t be much, but it’s still something from the point of view of material damage,” he said.
Speaking to Lusa, the mayor revealed that one of the biggest concerns is “some homes” where there has been a “complete loss” of the property and whose residents “now need support”.
The affected residents remain “in friends’ houses”, but as soon as there is a “solution to rehabilitate or rebuild the houses”, the situation will go through the “process of rehousing in some of the houses that the municipality has available”, he added.
The agricultural and tourism sectors also suffered “quite a lot of direct damage” and “even emergency solutions were needed”, he pointed out.
With regard to the forest, the Socialist mayor revealed that it is necessary to assess the damage caused by last August’s fire, but also the “work to be done in the future to make the forest mosaic more resilient and capable of not spreading to fires of this size”.
The fire, which started on August 5, was contained at 10:15 on August 9, six days after it broke out in an area of scrubland and pine forest in the Baiona area, in the parish of São Teotónio, in the municipality of Odemira.
The fire even entered the Algarve municipalities of Monchique and Aljezur.
The burned area amounts to around 8,400 hectares, within a perimeter of 50 kilometers.
