The dozens of forest fires burning in Portugal on Tuesday afternoon were visible from space. Images released by NASA, the American space agency, show a huge cloud of smoke, covering almost the entire northern region of the country and extending towards the south.
In relation to NASA’s Worldview images from last Monday, you can see an evolution of this cloud of smoke in the last 24 hours: there are more ignition points and instead of isolated points, like yesterday, it is now possible to see that the The fires are mixed in one place.big.
Comparing the two images, you can still see that the wind is pushing the smoke westwards, towards the Atlantic Ocean, which is covered by this cloud. The smoke is still visibly covering the area of Lisbon and Setúbal, in a smaller area.
This afternoon, the commander of the National Emergency and Civil Protection Authority, André Fernandes, considered that the “situation remains very complex” and that the next few hours will be “difficult to fight the fires.” The situation remains more critical in the Viseu district, he also noted.
According to the Civil Protection website, at the time of the NASA images, around 4:30 p.m. on Tuesday, 145 fires were active, requiring 6,133 operational personnel, 1,800 ground resources and 42 air resources.
Source: Observadora
