10 injured in Portugal heatwave-induced fire

LISBON: A total of 10 people, including five firefighters, were injured in a fire caused by the intense heatwave in Portugal’s town of Palmela on Wednesday.

According to the District Command of Relief Operations in the district of Setubal, a civilian has been hospitalized and is in serious condition, and the population has already been evacuated from the locality.

The incident occured at a time when the country is battling a sweltering heatwave.

This week, 28 weather stations in the country saw “records of maximum temperature for July, and in six of these stations all-time records were exceeded,” the Portuguese Institute for the Sea and Atmosphere (IPMA) reported on Wednesday.

For most districts in mainland Portugal a “red warning” has been issued, which is the most serious, with more than a hundred municipalities in “maximum danger of rural fire,” said the IPMA.

Mainland Portugal is in a contingency situation until July 15, due to a worsening risk of fire, with temperatures that can exceed 45 degrees Celsius in some parts of the country.

-Xinhua