The court ruling stated that “the magnitude, exceptionality, and unpredictability of the fire” precluded “any conclusion other than that the strict adherence to those duties [of care by the defendants] could not have prevented the harmful outcomes that occurred to the victims” or “even diminished the risk of their occurrence.”
For the appellate judges, this means that “the defendants had no power to prevent or even mitigate the harm to the protected legal interests, which prevents establishing a causal link” between the alleged omissions by the defendants and, “consequently, their accountability.”
The ruling, spanning 882 pages, found no basis for the conviction of the defendants and, accordingly, “the grounds for the obligation to compensate,” as determined by the Leiria Judicial Court, do not exist.
Thus, the appeals filed failed, and the verdict from the 1st instance court on September 13, 2022, which acquitted the 11 defendants, stands.
On that day, the panel of judges in Leiria acquitted the commander of the Pedrógão Grande Volunteer Firefighters, Augusto Arnaut, who was then responsible for the rescue operations, two employees of the former EDP Distribuição, now E-Redes (José Geria and Casimiro Pedro), and three from Ascendi (José Revés, Ugo Berardinelli, and Rogério Mota).
The acquittal also extended to the former presidents of the municipalities of Castanheira de Pera and Pedrógão Grande, Fernando Lopes and Valdemar Alves, respectively, as well as the current president of Figueiró dos Vinhos Municipality, Jorge Abreu.
The former vice-president of Pedrógão Grande Municipality, José Graça, and the former head of the Forest Office of this council, Margarida Gonçalves, were also acquitted.
The case involved charges of negligent homicide and physical integrity offenses by negligence, some of which were serious.
The Court of Appeal in Coimbra today reaffirmed the acquittal of the 11 defendants in the Pedrógão Grande fire case, for which the Public Prosecutor’s Office accounted 63 deaths and 44 injuries sought criminal proceedings.
Lusa | 14:29 – 25/06/2025
The Public Prosecutor’s Office (MP) appealed the acquittal to the TRC of Augusto Arnaut, Valdemar Alves, José Graça, Margarida Gonçalves, José Revés, Ugo Berardinelli, and Rogério Mota.
The parents of the firefighter who died due to the fires also filed an appeal against Fernando Lopes.
Additionally, two people who lost a total of five family members in these fires appealed the acquittal of the fire chief and the three Ascendi employees.
No appeal was filed against the acquittal of the employees of the former EDP Distribuição and the mayor Jorge Abreu.
The Pedrógão Grande fires, in the northern district of Leiria, broke out on the afternoon of June 17, 2017.
According to the MP’s indictment, the fires in Escalos Fundeiros and Regadas, in that municipality, were triggered by electrical discharges from an unascertained cause originating in the Lousã-Pedrógão medium tension line, under the responsibility of the former EDP Distribuição, near areas where the land was devoid of a protection strip and where fuel management had not been carried out.
These two fires eventually merged by the end of the day in a process known as “meeting of fronts,” which leads to a mechanism of “extreme fire behavior,” and collectively advanced “with great speed and intensity,” reaching National Road 236-1 (where most of the fatalities were found) and other areas of Castanheira de Pera, Figueiró dos Vinhos, and Pedrógão Grande, the most affected municipalities, according to the MP.
The road sub-concession of Pinhal Interior, which included this route, was awarded to Ascendi Pinhal Interior, which was responsible for fuel management.
The Leiria Court did not establish that the two fires were caused by electrical discharges or that the land near the medium tension line stretches where they occurred was without a protection strip.
