By Catarina Demony and Miguel Pereira
LISBON (Reuters) – Soaring temperatures in Portugal have forced authorities to place more than half of the country on “red alert” on Tuesday and deploy hundreds of firefighters to combat blazes erupting in the central region amid a heatwave that also swept Spain.
Temperatures across the drought-hit country were expected to surpass 40 degrees Celsius, Portugal’s weather agency IPMA said.
In Santarem north of Lisbon a wildfire that started last week reignited on Tuesday due to strong winds and nearly 400 firefighters were deployed to put it out.
Neighbouring Spain was also facing high risk of wildfires, with the regions of Extremadura, Castille and Leon the main concerns, authorities said. The northwestern province of Orense was on “red alert” as temperatures were expected to reach 42 C.
In the Portuguese capital, which is buzzing with tourists, people were trying to keep cool by drinking water, eating ice cream or heading to the riverside or nearby beaches.
At a small beach area by the river Tagus, a British couple and their toddler enjoyed the morning sunshine before it got too hot to be out.
“We kept an eye on the weather before we came, and we knew it was going to be hot…it’s quite similar back in the UK but we don’t have air con there,” 28-year-old Megan Slancey said with a giggle.
Britain’s Met Office has issued an extreme heat warning as temperatures continue to increase this week and early next week in much of England and Wales.
Clare Nullis, a World Meteorological Organisation spokesperson, told a United Nations briefing on Tuesday that although the heatwave, Europe’s second this year, was mainly affecting Portugal and Spain, it was likely to spread elsewhere.
“It is affecting large parts of Europe and it will intensify,” Nullis said.
With human-caused climate change triggering droughts, the number of extreme wildfires is expected to increase 30% within the next 28 years, according to a February 2022 U.N. report.
“You definitely see that the weather has changed over the last few years,” said 51-year-old Paul de Almeida, a South African visiting Lisbon. “We have to take actions to solve it.”
(Reporting by Catarina Demony and Miguel Pereira in Lisbon, Guillermo Martinez, Michael Gore in Spain, Elena Rodriguez in Madrid, Emma Farge in Geneva; Editing by Andrei Khalip and Angus MacSwan)
