By Catarina Demony
LISBON (Reuters) – Portugal on Friday sent firefighters from the mainland to the Atlantic island of Madeira, boosting local efforts to tackle large wildfires as authorities said 13 tourists who were forced to hide in a cave to escape the flames had been found.
Fires are sweeping across areas of two neighbouring municipalities on the west coast, Calheta and Porto Moniz, burning in hard-to-reach areas amid unseasonably high temperatures expected to top 30 degrees Celsius (86°F) on Friday.
The Civil Protection authority on Friday morning located the missing tourists. They had fled to a cave in a mountainous part of Porto Moniz and an operation to rescue them from the area was under way, it said on social media.
“It was a complicated night, a difficult night,” Civil Protection secretary of state Patricia Gaspar told public broadcaster RTP at Lisbon’s military airport. “The fires are still ongoing.”
The whole coastline of Madeira – an autonomous region of Portugal home to around 250,000 people and a popular tourist destination – has been placed on orange alert, the second highest level, until Saturday.
A third fire was reported on Friday in a forested area in the municipality of Camara de Lobos, west of the island’s capital Funchal.
In Calheta, a blaze that started on Wednesday has burned across 70 square kilometres, more than half of the municipality’s area, according to mayor Carlos Teles. A care home and a health centre were evacuated on Thursday as a precaution, while 120 guests were moved from a hotel.
A few houses have been destroyed in Calheta and Porto Moniz, but no serious injuries reported so far, authorities said.
Porto Moniz mayor Emanuel Camara told RTP it was a “night to forget” and that “many people” were evacuated as a precaution. He said the wildfire had lost intensity but was not under control.
Gaspar said firefighters from the mainland would remain on Madeira for as long as needed, as a military plane carrying 64 departed for the island to join the more than 100 local firefighters already on the ground.
(Reporting by Catarina Demony; Editing by Inti Landauro and John Stonestreet)
