The danger period for forest fires in Portugal is officially over for 2014 and the numbers are in, showing that the cooler than normal summer helped keep the figure to 7,000 reported fires, the lowest for ten years.
The amount of land damaged by fire was lower too with a third less burnt this year than last but landowners still lost 19,021 hectares.
The interim report on forest fires from the Institute for Nature Conservation and Forestry (ICNF) shows that between January 1 and September 15, there were 6,958 fires, less than half the number seen last year, and the area lost was a fraction of the extraordinary loss of 138,393 hectares in 2013.
The only two years in the past decade that had fewer fires reported were 2007 and 2008, with 18,755 and 12,659 hectares destroyed.
The largest fire was in Nisa, Portalegre where one blaze destroyed 2,268 hectares of forest.
The Minister of Internal Affairs, Miguel Macedo, displaying a rarely seen sense of humour, commented that he was “the only Portuguese who liked this summer” as according to the Portuguese weather service this summer saw the second lowest average temperatures for 25 years, with one short heatwave in June, keeping fires to a manageable number.
July was the wettest since 1931 and the eighth wettest this century and in August there were no days with a temperature of higher than 40 degrees, a situation that has not been seen since 1996.
Resources have been channelled into firefighting equipment and manpower costs this year with an extra €14 million spent compared to last year.
