At least three dozen houses and a five-star hotel have burned down, Miguel Albuquerque, head of Madeira’s regional government, told reporters in.
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He said 80 people were in hospital suffering from burns and smoke inhalation, including two in a serious condition.
Fred Schlegel and his family checked into the Choupana Hills Resort & Spa at the popular tourist destination from their home in Leberge, France, near Toulouse, on Monday, about the time the wildfires began that day. There were 186 wildfires on the mainland by late afternoon Wednesday, and fire chiefs said their crews were exhausted.
On Tuesday evening, Portugal’s civil protection service said more than 4,000 firefighters were attending to 150 separate blazes, with seven major fires now out of control.
Smoke fanned by strong winds has also disrupted flights at the airport.
Meanwhile, news footage showed licks of flame over Funchal Tuesday as residents desperately tried to quell the fires with hosepipes.
Firefighters said steep hills, dense woodland and large amounts of dry pine trees after a recent drought had made it particularly hard to tackle the flames once they began to spread.
The worst-hit areas were in northern Portugal, where temperatures have exceeded 30 degrees Celsius (86 Fahrenheit) since Saturday.
The weather forecast is for cooler temperatures and a drop in the wind speed, which authorities hope will help extinguish the Madeira fire. The region’s pine and eucalyptus forests are tinder-dry after a long spell without significant rain.
In the area around Viseu, 290km (180 miles) north of Lisbon, the capital, a wildfire forced the closure of a major motorway.
In Lisbon, Tuesday was hazy with a smell of smoke caused by wildfires in the surrounding region.
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More than 3,000 people have been battling to contain roughly 100 fires across the country with 12 major blazes leading to the evacuation of local residents overnight.
