Five districts on red alert between Monday and Tuesday due to heat

Five districts on the mainland will be under red alert between Monday and Tuesday, due to the hot weather, the Portuguese Institute of the Sea and Atmosphere (IPMA) announced this morning.

The districts of Bragança, Porto, Vila Real, Viana do Castelo and Braga will be under red alert between 6:00 am on Monday and 6:00 pm on Tuesday, according to the IPMA.

Between 9:00 today and 6:00 on Monday, these five districts are under orange warning and, until then, the yellow alert is activated.

According to the IPMA, the remaining districts are under orange and yellow warnings, varying between today and Tuesday.

The red warning is the highest on the scale used by IPMA and represents a meteorological situation of extreme risk, while the orange, the second most serious, is issued in a “meteorological situation of moderate to high risk” and the yellow is issued whenever there is a risk situation for certain activities dependent on the meteorological situation.

Mainland Portugal entered a state of alert today due to the high risk of fires in the coming days.

"In light of worsening weather forecasts that point to a significant risk of rural fires, the Government has decided to declare a state of alert across the entire mainland," the Minister of Internal Administration, Maria Lúcia Amaral, announced on Saturday in a statement to the nation, without the right to questions.

The alert situation came into effect at 00:00 and will last until 23:59 on Thursday, August 7th.

The four main fires raging in mainland Portugal were being fought by 978 firefighters supported by 325 vehicles at around 4:45 a.m.

According to the ANEPC portal, at this time, there were 523 operators in the Ponte da Barca fire, supported by 174 land resources, in the two in Vila Real (Torgueda and São Cibrão) there were a total of 386 operators and 128 vehicles and in Celorico de Basto there were 69 operators supported by 23 land resources.

These are the largest fires included by Civil Protection in the list of ongoing rural fires (not yet considered controlled/under resolution) among the so-called “significant occurrences”, described as such by duration or number of resources.