Fire Threatens Homes

This evening a fire in the Sítio do Barreira above Santo Antonio has rekindled and with a change in wind direction, threatens peoples homes.

In the last few minutes the situation has become worse with the wind and moving towards houses, and with reports of some homes already being damaged by fire. fire fights from 4 areas are at the scene along with police controlling the traffic and evacuating residents.

The weather outlook is for this dry heat to continue over the next few days at least , and if the wind picks up more then we could see more fires breaking out.

driving back from Funchal today things seemed settled, with just pockets of smoke here and there through the high land above Funchal.

Fire above Santo Antonio moving towards property with the wind.

UPDATE

This morning the situation is much calmer in Sitia do Barreira, firefighters are still at the scene, but the fire is more under control now.

Madeira will remain on yellow alert for high temperatures until Wednesday evening-

The fires at Monte the other night made the BBC news.

Fires Spread

Today with a strong breeze the fires I mentioned in my last post started to spread, and throughout today many fires have broken out in the Monte and São Roque areas, with another in São Antonio.

This below is translated from the Diario.

 The City of Funchal just announced that decided to activate the Municipal Emergency Plan. The CMF, a note signed by the vice president Pedro Calado, explains that because of the developments of the fires in the county, particularly in the highlands of the Hill and parishes of St. Roque, decided to activate the Municipal Emergency Plan for Civil Protection, the from 18 hours of Friday.

At 19.30 to the Municipal Civil Protection will give a press conference at the premises of the headquarters of the Municipal Civil Protection Service.

Prior to that, also the Regional Service of Civil Protection is the balance of a hard day in the two parishes with fires that are still active and very close also to get to Saint Anthony, locality where the afternoon was said to have already reached the fire, which will not be confirmed. For now, the fires ravage woodlands of Mount San Roque and in some places very close to residential areas.

It is now 10.30 pm and fires are still burning, and getting closer to homes, the fire department are doing a great job especially with the wind. A friend has been sending me photos throughout the day which you can see below.

Large Forest Fire

Just coming back along the motorway I could see a large forest fire had started, The fire is reported in the area of Meia Serra Santa Cruz, and the fire department are there with 4 vehicles and 8 men.

* Update 8.20pm *

The latest update states that the main front of the fire has been controlled, but 2 others are still active, and it will be a while before this is controlled. There are now 24 fire fighters in the area helping to bring the blaze under control.

Forest fire in Quinta Grande

A large forest fire broke out in the Quinta Grande area this morning, the plume of smoke could be seen from miles away. The fire department acted quick, and managed to bring the fire under control and extinguish it in just a few hours.

April saw 64 reported forest fires, none of which were large enough to do to much damage.

From DNoticias.