The fires are out in Albergaria-a-Velha now, their embers washed away by the heavy rain. But their reek still carries on the damp air, rising from the sooty earth, the scorched tree trunks, the burnt-out cars and houses, and the puddles of black and acrid water.
If the numbers offer a glimpse of the toll that last week’s wildfires took on this northern Portuguese municipality – four people dead, at least seven injured, 25,269 hectares burned and 81 homes damaged – they cannot convey the sense of fear and loss that the 26-metre-high flames brought with them.
Maria João Aleluia, 66, isn’t sure how to articulate how she feels as she stands in front of the house her grandfather built on the outskirts of town in the 1950s, and which she has loved since she was a child. A structural engineer will determine the extent of the damage, but even an untrained eye can take in the collapsed roof, the fire-cracked windows and the blackened walls.
“I’ll be sick about all this in two months, but right now I have too much to do to be able to cry,” says the consumer psychology consultant.
Unable to get to the house after the fires reached the area on 16 September, Aleluia asked neighbours to send her the photos that confirmed her fears.
When she managed to reach the house two days later, she brought big bottles of water with her in the hope that dousing the trees’ roots would save them, especially her cherished linden tree, already a veteran of far too many wildfires.
A little farther into town, close to a pair of burnt-out Minis and a Nissan whose bonnet and bumper have half-melted to reveal the skeletal engine beneath, Victor Manuel dos Santos was also counting the damage, and giving thanks for the smoke alarm he’d bought in Lidl.
The detector’s beeping woke him early on Monday morning and he opened his eyes to see flames at his windowsill.
“It must have been six or seven AM but it was so dark with smoke that I thought that it was night,” he says. “There was no light. A sea of fire had come across the field next door that was so covered with brambles that it looked like the Amazon jungle.”
Dos Santos, 59, was well-prepared. He grabbed the helmet, gas mask and goggles he keeps near his bed and set about fighting the fire, which had already found its way into the neighbouring storeroom where he kept his papers, books and paint.
“I put on some gloves and grabbed a shovel and threw everything that was burning out into the garden,” he says as he stands amid his charred loquat and citrus trees, his twisted bike and the melted remains of bottles.
If the smoke alarm – “a blessed investment” – hadn’t gone off, he says, everything, himself included, would have burned.
Last week’s fires, which were fuelled by strong winds, dry conditions and unseasonably hot temperatures of more than 30C (85F), killed nine people, injured dozens more and burned 100,000 hectares of land across northern and central Portugal.
They have also brought back memories of the calamitous blazes of 2017, which claimed 66 lives, and serve as yet another reminder of the impact of the climate emergency in Europe.
João Oliveira, who leads the civil protection agency in Albergaria, sums up the past few days in two words: “Absolute chaos.”
When asked how the fire compared with previous ones, he shakes his head. “There’s no comparison at all. We’re used to having these cyclical fires here every 10 years or so … but the amount of energy the fire created, the amount of damage it did and the intensity and violence of the fire were something we’d never seen before.”
The only blessing, he says, is that the lessons of 2017 appear to have been learned. People in the area followed the safe villages plan, introduced in the wake of the tragedy seven years ago, which teaches residents to practise emergency drills and seek shelter in a designated local building, usually a church or chapel. That way the roads are kept clear and people are not burned as they try to flee in their cars, as happened in 2017.
The state Institute for the Conservation of Nature and Forests also believes people are better informed than they were seven years ago.
“Every municipality has its own fire protection plan, most of them updated, and new ones were also approved for the regional and sub-regional levels,” says a spokesperson. “There are several projects intended to diversify land use and forest occupation, namely around villages and towns in forested areas.”
Experts agree that land use and forest management are absolutely essential to Portugal’s efforts to contain future fires.
Miguel Bugalho, who teaches forest and wildlife conservation at the University of Lisbon, points out how much the landscape has changed over the past few decades. Mixed land use – crop cultivation and animal grazing – have given way to enormous forests of eucalyptus, a tree prized for its rapid growth and use in the paper and cellulose industries.
When the “mosaic” landscape is lost, says Bugalho, the land can become choked with vegetation from small eucalyptus growers unable to afford the costly task of keeping their land clear of the biomass that fuels the fires.
“Sometimes people aren’t aware that forest fires are symptoms of some very structural causes that are down to socioeconomic reasons,” he says.
“We need financial support so people can keep their vegetation at low levels, but we also need to find completely novel land-use systems, such as the mosaic approach that you see in some areas.”
Domingos Viegas, a fire researcher and professor at the University of Coimbra, argues that it’s too easy to blame everything on the proliferation of eucalyptus trees.
“I’m not very sympathetic when it comes to eucalyptus but I’m also not against it,” he says. “It’s one of the most widespread species in the country, so it’s logical that many fires will burn eucalyptus … But there’s a great difference in eucalyptus plantations across the country between those that are well managed and those that are not.”
So how can Portugal best prepare itself for the fires of the years to come?
“We can organise the system better so that we’re better prepared, but that’s not an issue of having more planes and more fire trucks and all that,” he says. “It’s about … landscape management, creating a mixture of agriculture and forestry land so you have mosaics rather than continuous extensions of monoculture that support fires without stopping.”
Victor Manuel dos Santos concedes he panicked a bit when the flames were licking at his window. But he is also ready for the fires that the future will inevitably bring.
“When the next one comes, I’ll fight it,” he says. “And if things are different, I’ll tell death he’s late because I’ve lived a lot.”
João Oliveira, too, is also already planning for the next huge fire, whose flames, he fears, will spring from the charred trees and vegetation that now dot the municipality.
“These extreme fires are becoming more common,” he says. “I think the next one will come in 2032 because no one will want all the burnt firewood that’s on the hills and that will lead to further abandonment of the land. The forest will grow, the temperatures will continue to increase, and there will be more and more fuel for the fires to burn.”
