A Wildfire in Valpaços Rips Through 15,000 Hectares of Vineyards and Groves as the Mayor Asks Lisbon for a State of Calamity

A wildfire that broke out on Tuesday afternoon in the interior north has become one of the summer's most destructive, tearing across the vineyards, olive groves and scrubland of Trás-os-Montes and forcing villages to be evacuated. The mayor of Valpaços, Jorge Mata Pires, has formally asked the government to declare a situação de calamidade — a state of calamity — for his municipality.

The fire ignited at around 15:00 on Tuesday, 12 August, near Ervões, in the district of Vila Real, and spread quickly into the neighbouring municipalities of Mirandela and Vinhais, in the district of Bragança. By Thursday, Mata Pires told the news agency Lusa, it had consumed roughly 15,000 hectares — "more than 10,000 hectares are in Valpaços" alone. That figure is the mayor's own estimate; earlier the same day the northern regional civil-protection command gave a more cautious provisional reading of "above 6,000 hectares," a gap that will only be resolved once the flames are out and the burnt perimeter can be surveyed.

Whatever the final tally, the agricultural toll is heavy. Mata Pires described the destruction of hundreds of hectares of vineyards, along with olive groves, almond orchards and blueberry and other soft-fruit operations. "The losses are many," he said. Valpaços activated its Municipal Emergency and Civil Protection Plan on Wednesday, and firefighting has drawn in firefighters, GNR military police, civil-protection teams and the Army.

The blaze has repeatedly outrun the effort to contain it. As the fire crossed the River Rabaçal into Mirandela, the village of São Pedro Velho was evacuated, with other hamlets emptied or their residents confined indoors for safety. Aerial support has been erratic: a planned morning operation using twelve aircraft could not be carried out on Thursday for safety reasons, and only five were flying by early afternoon, the second commander of the northern regional civil-protection unit told RTP. Intense wind and thick smoke have repeatedly grounded the water-bombers, and the commander warned that an expected shift in the weather would bring strong gusts likely to "push the fire back" toward already-scorched ground.

The scale of the mobilisation underlines the difficulty. According to figures from the national emergency and civil-protection authority, ANEPC, cited by Notícias ao Minuto, 907 operatives, 302 vehicles and seven aircraft were committed to the fire as of around midday on Thursday.

For residents of the interior north — a thinly populated region whose economy leans on wine, olive oil and almonds — a fire on this scale is both an immediate danger and a slow-burning economic blow, wiping out crops weeks before harvest. It also lands squarely in the middle of a heatwave that had already pushed dozens of interior councils into the highest wildfire-risk band, and it will test the government's civil-protection response at the season's most dangerous point. A formal declaration of calamity, if granted, would unlock extraordinary state support for the recovery that must follow.