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Santiago de Guarda on Wednesday - A forest fire has reached the town in central Portugal, several houses are on fire.
The residents fear for their belongings.
Antonio Ramalheiro, resident
“It's scary when the fire comes.
It's hard to counteract.
If it reaches the houses, you lose everything - a shame."
Extreme temperatures are currently prevailing in many places in Portugal.
Up to 45 degrees Celsius were measured in the Leiria region in the center of the country.
More than 1,500 firefighters and firefighting aircraft were deployed in the city of Leiria and the surrounding communities.
Forest fires are currently raging across southern Europe.
One cause of the fires is drought.
A drought atlas shows which regions in Europe are particularly dry – “vegetation stress” prevails in the dark red zones, areas where the soil is too dry are marked in red – the result: the forests are particularly flammable and fires spread quickly .
The preliminary balance of the fires near Leiria: 3,000 hectares of land destroyed, 30 injured and one dead.
More than a dozen homes were damaged.
The emergency services were not always there in time.
Albertina Fransicso, resident of Santiago de Guarda
»No firefighters came to my sister's house, everything around it burned down, all the porches.
The neighbors and my husband were able to put out the flames around the house.
We didn't have anyone else.
The fire brigade and the fire-fighting planes have just arrived.«
There are also fires in the Algarve holiday region in the south of the country.
The wind fanned the flames, like here in Almancil, there was an alarm mood in many places.
After a brief »damper« at the weekend, temperatures in Germany will probably skyrocket at the beginning of next week.
According to the German Weather Service, 35 degrees and more are possible, especially in the south-west half of the country.
