WILDFIRES – THE WORST EVER

 

Most Portuguese newspapers continue to feature wildfires on their front pages as this is the worst year for wildfires in Portugal’s history.

 

It has been announced that an extraordinary debate on wildfires will be held in the Portuguese parliament next week.

 

More areas have been burnt across the country than ever before, with the destruction helped at times by strong winds, low humidity, and always because of parched earth due to a lack of rain.

 

So far, 261,000 hectares (645,000 acres) have been destroyed this year compared to 143,000 hectares (353,000 acres) last year.

 

This week a third man died and at least 15 others were injured – one critically – while fighting different blazes The latest man killed was working for a company hired to help the northwastern municipality of Mirandela The injured men were battling fires near the city of Setubal, about 50 km south of the capital Lisbon where two water-bombing aircraft sent by Sweden were operating. These aircraft and further foreign assistance have been deployed by the European Civil Protection Agency.

 

By mid-week, the four fiercest wildfires were still in the north and central parts of the country and occupying the attention of more than 2,000 ground firefighters and about 20 aircraft.

 

The situation has also been extremely serious in neighbouring Spain, as well as France Turkey and the Balkans, though hopes are now rising that temperatures seem to be cooling after weeks of extreme heat.

In the Algarve, a few relatively small wildfires have neem quickly been brought under contra.

While it is thought that lightning strikes may have sparked some wildfires in Iberia, arsonists are strongly suspected.

 

Meteorologists say that heat extremes are becoming more intensive and common because of human-induced climate change.

CHARITIES

ALZHEIMER 

PORTUGAL

Alzheimer Portugal is a nationwide organisation created more than 30 years ago specifically to promote the quality of life for people with dementia, as well as their families and carers.

It is there for you should you need their professional advice.

Alzheimer Portugal actively participates with its European and worldwide partners to gather and disseminate the latest information about dementia.

Website:

https://alzheimerportugal.org

Email:

info@alzheimerportugal.org

Phone Contacts:

Lisbon: +351 21 361 04 60

Faro: 289 803 747

Portimão: 965 276 690

Lagoa: 965 276 690

⸻MADRUGADA

This unique Algarve organisation provides a home-based, end-of-life palliative nursing care service for people wishing to spend their final days professionally cared for in their own home.

Established in 2009, they are now renowned for the excellence of palliative care, which is provided free of charge.

Based in Praia da Luz in the western Algarve, their specialist clinical teams work extensively to help people, and those important to them, manage the challenges of life-limiting illnesses through counselling, therapeutic and creative activities, complementary therapies, advice, and education.

For more information:

Call: +351 282 761 375

Email: admin@madrugada-portugal.com

The more donations they receive, the more their specialist volunteers are able to care for the community.

 

 

 

 

COMPETING WITH THE HEATING

 

Intensifying heat due to climate change has caused a surge in ocean temperatures, including the sea along the coast of the Algarve.

 

Holidaying and resident beachgoers can expect local sea temperatures to be between 23 and 24 degrees C this Saturday (tomorrow).

 

The whole of Portugal is experiencing high temperatures with some averaging 34 C mid-week. Forest fires are still raging in northern and central regions, some fuelled by high winds and being battled by exhausted firefighters.

 

Heat alerts published by the national meteorological agency are warning citizens across the mainland to take special care.

 

Severe as the situation now is, it was worse at this time last month when records were broken. July had the hottest marine temperatures ever recorded in Portugal. The warming was widespread with 95% of the Mediterranean showing above average temperatures.

 

The western Mediterranean has been the most affected by “extreme anomalies”

 

Other Mediterranean countries are struggling with high temperatures too. Greece has been doing its best to cope with a dozen major wildfires, including one threatening the third largest city.

 

Spain, France, Italy and the Balkans have been struggling with extreme temperatures that scientists say are due to climate change and the lack of action taken to control harmful greenhouse emission by the world’s major powers.

 

The comfortably warm sea may be helping illegal immigrants, such as the group washed ashore in a wooden boat in Vila de Bispo in the western Algarve last Friday. They appeared in court on the next day and ordered to be removed from Portuguese territory 

 

Meanwhile, a new study has revealed that climate change heat waves are forcing a “staggering decline” in bird populations around the world. The first-of-its-kind analysis published the NatureEcology and Evolution journal says the decline has occurred mainly in the tropics, but also everywhere else.

CHARITIES

ALZHEIMER 

PORTUGAL

Alzheimer Portugal is a nationwide organisation created more than 30 years ago specifically to promote the quality of life for people with dementia, as well as their families and carers.

It is there for you should you need their professional advice.

Alzheimer Portugal actively participates with its European and worldwide partners to gather and disseminate the latest information about dementia.

Website:

https://alzheimerportugal.org

Email:

info@alzheimerportugal.org

Phone Contacts:

Lisbon: +351 21 361 04 60

Faro: 289 803 747

Portimão: 965 276 690

Lagoa: 965 276 690

⸻MADRUGADA

This unique Algarve organisation provides a home-based, end-of-life palliative nursing care service for people wishing to spend their final days professionally cared for in their own home.

Established in 2009, they are now renowned for the excellence of palliative care, which is provided free of charge.

Based in Praia da Luz in the western Algarve, their specialist clinical teams work extensively to help people, and those important to them, manage the challenges of life-limiting illnesses through counselling, therapeutic and creative activities, complementary therapies, advice, and education.

For more information:

Call: +351 282 761 375

Email: admin@madrugada-portugal.com

The more donations they receive, the more their specialist volunteers are able to care for the community.

WILDFIRES ARE GETTING WORSE

[

Intensifying heat and wildfires continue to devastate big areas of Portugal with no end yet in sight.

An added problem is that “the fight against climate misinformation is being hampered by a phenomenon of paralysis in which people believe that combating climate change is not worth the effort,” according to Alice Fonseca, a climate and policy expert at World Wildlife (WWL) Portugal

Disinformation about climate change is increasingly targeting individuals, institutions and vulnerable social groups in Portugal, says Filipe Pardal, chief operating officer of the Portuguese fact-tracker at “Poligrafo”, a government member of the European Fact-checking Standards Network. There has been a spike of false information across social media platforms, including TikTok, Instagram, WhatsApp, YouTube and Facebook 

Meanwhile, accurate reports are coming in daily of devastating wildfires caused by severe heat and bone-dry conditions forcing evacuations not only in Portugal, but across Spain and France. 

An enormous blaze that erupted this Tuesday in France’s Aude region scorched in less than 24 hours at least 15,000 fechares ( 37,000 acres), an area larger than the size of Paris. 

In Spain, prolonged heatwaves since Sunday reaching43C have brought about multiple wildfires across the country. The Spanish Ministry of Health has reported well over 1,000 deaths in July due to extreme heat.

Portugal has been Europe’s worst affected country over the past decade. This year, wildfires have already burned more than 42,000 hectares ( 104,000 acres) of forest, scrub and agricultural land, eight times more than this period last year. The worst wildfire destruction has been in the last two weeks. At least 800 firefighters, backed by more than 280 water-straying vehicles and aircraft, have been battling massive blazes in the northern regions of Vila Real and Mondim de Basto. They are being assisted by a special team from Latvia.

Many of the Portuguese firefighters are exhausted after dedicating so many long days and nights to their very difficult and dangerous efforts. They 

have called on the government to send reinforcements. Foreign firefighters will be willing to help if not tied up with their own battles. 

A state of emergency has been in effect in the capital, Lisbon, on the west coast.  Elsewhere, more than 100 municipalities have been declared on maximum fire alerts 

As of Saturday evening, 55 rural fires were ablaze in mainland Portugal. 

ALZHEIMER PORTUGAL

Alzheimer Portugal is a nationwide organisation created more than 30 years ago specifically to promote the quality of life for people with dementia, as well as their families and carers.

It is there for you should you need their professional advice.

Alzheimer Portugal actively participates with its European and worldwide partners to gather and disseminate the latest information about dementia.

Website:

https://alzheimerportugal.org

Email:

info@alzheimerportugal.org

Phone Contacts:

Lisbon: +351 21 361 04 60

Faro: 289 803 747

Portimão: 965 276 690

Lagoa: 965 276 690

⸻

MADRUGADA

This unique Algarve organisation provides a home-based, end-of-life palliative nursing care service for people wishing to spend their final days professionally cared for in their own home.

Established in 2009, they are now renowned for the excellence of palliative care, which is provided free of charge.

Based in Praia da Luz in the western Algarve, their specialist clinical teams work extensively to help people, and those important to them, manage the challenges of life-limiting illnesses through counselling, therapeutic and creative activities, complementary therapies, advice, and education.

For more information:

Call: +351 282 761 375

Email: admin@madrugada-portugal.com

The more donations they receive, the more their specialist volunteers are able to care for the community.

WIDESPREAD WILDFIRES RAGING

Weeks of excessive heat and drought caused by climate change have left forests in Portugal parched and highly vulnerable to devastating wildfires.

 

An estimated 154 square kilometres have so far been burnt as more than 5,000 firefighters do their best to contain 100 active wildfires in 50 municipalities across mainland Portugal.

 

Last weekend, firefighters backed by around a dozen water‑bombing aircraft began battling huge blazes in central and northern parts of the country  Since then, the authorities have been issuing urgent alerts warning citizens about further aggressive heatwaves throughout the country.

 

The most complex battles so far have been in Ponte da Barca, in the district of Viana do Castelo, in central Portugal. Four villages had to be evacuated. One blaze destroyed around 3,000 hectares of forest, according to the National Civil Protection Agency.

 

From the beginning of this year until 15 July, more than 3,000 fires had burnt a total of 10,768 hectares of scrub, forests and agricultural land in Portugal, three times more than in the same period last year. And while these figures do not include this week’s fires, the hot month of August still lies ahead.

None of this is new to Portuguese firefighters. They have fought similar battles in recent years, but this is so far the worst incident this year on the entire Iberian Peninsula.

 

Some of the fiercest fires have been in the Evora and Beja districts. The mountainous area of Arouca, about 300 kilometres north of Lisbon, has also been badly affected. The popular scenic trails of Passadiços do Paiva, much loved by tourists, were closed earlier this week.

 

Earlier, hard‑to‑control fires broke out in the Peneda‑Gerês National Park near the Spanish border, enveloping nearby villages in such dense smoke that residents were urged to stay indoors.

 

Several suspects linked to fires are believed to have been arrested.

 

 

 

FOOTPRINTS FOUND OF AN ANCIENT HUMAN SPECIES

New evidence has emerged of an ancient species of humans – Neanderthals – having lived in the Algarve about 78,000 years ago.

So-called ‘modern humans’, first existed at the same time as Neanderthals, a closely related species that inhabited Africa around 500,000 years ago before migrating to both Asia and Europe. When Homo sapiens eventually made similar migrations, some interbreeding occurred before Neanderthals died out about 40,000 years ago.

The causes of their extinction are thought to include violence and the spread of modern human diseases from which Neanderthals had no immunity.

 

Today, a small number of people of European or Asian descent still carry traces of Neanderthal DNA. Recent findings in the Algarve hint that some Portuguese people may share this genetic legacy.

 

A couple of geological researchers, Carlos Neto de Carvalho and his wife, Yilhu Zhang, have found a series of Neanderthal footprints embedded in sandstone rocks from collapsed cliffs on the beautiful Monte Clérigo beach near Aljezur on the Algarve’s west coast.

It has been reported that the couple brought colleagues to photograph the site and discovered five fossilised tracks comprising 26 footprints of an adult male and two children, one of whom appears tp have been  just a toddler.

 

The footprints were preserved in what were once steep sand dunes, now fossilised into stone, sloping to and away from the shore. Their orientation suggests the family were foraging for food such as shellfish, moving between the beach and the dunes. 

The footprints were not an easy find. “We were almost trapped by the sudden rise of the tide and needed to swim and climb a 15-metre, nearly vertical cliff with all our gear,” said Neto de Carvalho.

 

A single fossilised Neanderthal footprint, thought to be 82,000 years old had been previously found not far away at Praia do Telheiro, close to Sagres.

 

“The fossil record of hominin footprints, and especially those attributed to Neanderthals, is exceedingly rare,” as they are nearly identical to those of Homo sapiens, Neto de Carvalho and his colleagues wrote in the 3 July edition of the journal Nature Scientific Reports. 

The Monte Clérigo footprints were certainly those of Neanderthals, as modern humans did not exist in Europe 78,000 years ago. By then, though, foraging for shellfish in the Algarve may have been a normal daily activity for Neanderthals.

Only six sets of Neanderthal footprints had previously been discovered in the whole of Europe. With this new discovery, the total now stands at eight.