Portugal managed today to bring under control all the forest fires that ravaged the north and center of the country this week, killing seven people and turning 1,000,000 hectares of vegetation to ashes, rescue services said.

“All fronts that were still active yesterday and early today were brought under control“, the country’s head of civil protection, Andre Fernandez, said during a press conference.

Although the drop in temperature and rainfall have helped put out the fires, the heavy rains expected in the coming days could trigger landslides in areas affected by the fires, he warned.

Since Saturday, firefighters have battled more than a thousand fires, with sweltering heat and gusty winds fueling the flames.

Dozens of these fires broke out in the province of Aveiro (north), where four fronts spread over a perimeter of 100 kilometers and destroyed about 200,000 hectares of vegetation, according to an estimate published yesterday by the European Copernicus Observatory.

Across the country, the area burned by fires since the beginning of the year now amounts to more than 1,200,000 hectares, of which 60% is forest land, 29% scrubland and 11% agricultural land, based on data from the National Institute for Conservation of Nature and Forests (ICNF).

The vast majority of that damage was caused by this week’s fires, as burned areas by the end of August barely topped 100,000 acres.

Therefore, the 2024 toll is the heaviest since the black year of 2017, when burned areas reached 5,000,000 hectares.

The fires of June and October 2017 had caused the death of more than 100 people.

By one count, this week’s fires have killed 7 people, including 4 firefighters, and resulted in about 100 people injured, 14 of them seriously.

The government declared Friday a day of national mourning and thanked France, Spain, Italy and Morocco for sending about 10 firefighting planes to help with the firefighting efforts.