Smoke rises from the ground in a burnt pine forest near Mealhada, northern Portugal, Thursday, Aug. 11 2016.
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Reinforcements, including firefighters and doctors, arrived Wednesday from the mainland and Portugal’s mid-Atlantic Azores Islands.
France sent 1,500 firefighters to tackle a number of fierce blazes that gutted buildings and forced more than 1,000 people to flee their homes.
The most risky fire was burning around Fos-Sur-Mer, 25 miles northwest of Marseille, which is home to a large vast industrial zone where oil and petrochemicals are stocked.
The A8 has reopened after being closed for part of the night.
In an immediate response to Portugal’s request for assistance, the European Union activated the Civil Protection Mechanism to help stop the spread of forest fires in several parts of the country.
Firefighters in Portugal are also battling multiple blazes fed by brush in a hot, dry summer for a sixth straight day.
There was no letup in the high southern winds, known as the Mistral, raising the risk of new bursts of flames after the worst blaze in recent years was contained. “We will find those who started them”, he said, but did not elaborate. Other towns affected included Pennes-Mirabeau, Saint-Victoret, Fos-sur-Mer and Rognac, where the BBC says the main fire started.
Fires were burning in Portugal and Spain. Hundreds of miles away, a fire swept overnight into Funchal, the capital of Portugal’s Madeira Islands, killing three elderly people and leaving more than 300 with minor burns and smoke inhalation. More than 3,000 hectares of vegetation were destroyed in the Marseille area, the Herault and the Pyrenees-Orientales regions.
Homes were destroyed in Vitrolles, a town 20 miles north of Marseille and at least three people are seriously injured. Three people died in their homes Tuesday night when the neighborhood was reached by the forest fires that are raging in Madeira and have forced the evacuation of more than 1,000 residents and tourists.
In Portugal, emergency services are fighting 12 major blazes across the country, with more than 1,700 firefighters, 558 fire trucks and 6 aircraft involved in battling the fires, the Portuguese National Civil Protection Authority said.
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A Vitrolles resident, Caroline Vidal told iTele TV, “It was a scene really like the end of the world”, referring to what she was faced with while fleeing her home to her grandmother’s house, seeing people wandering around frantically on the highway.
