Locals survey destruction wreaked by Portugal fires

On the day that a wildfire threatened his village in Portugal, Alexandre Santos was left on his own to try to save his livestock warehouse from the flames.

A firefighter "came to tell me that there were no trucks available to respond so I was left to my own devices," said Santos, 77, who has looked after livestock for four decades in Pessegueiro do Vougo, a village south of Porto.

While his 9,000 chickens were not hurt and have since been sent to the slaughterhouse, the flames destroyed the motor heating his warehouse, requiring costly repairs.

Santos, meanwhile, suffered burns on his arm and shoulder.

He is one of many dispirited locals  in northern Portugal who on Thursday were taking stock of the damage wreaked by powerful forest fires across large swathes of land earlier this week.

The blazes, which sprang up in the Aveiro region over the weekend, fed by crushing heat and strong winds, have killed five people, four of them firefighters.

Another 90 people were injured, 12 of them seriously, and dozens of buildings were destroyed.

By Thursday afternoon, the rescue services recorded only four "fairly active" fires in the north of the country.

"I'm waiting for insurance assessors to know if I can work again, because without aid I won't be able to," Santos told AFP.

"It is very sad," he said, looking at a smouldering stack of metal.

The blaze in Sever do Vougo near Santos's farm was one of the four fires that engulfed the Aveiro region across around 100 kilometres (60 miles) and burnt through 20,000 hectares (49,400 acres) of land, the EU's Copernicus climate monitor estimated on Thursday.

- 'Unprecedented' -

Bordering Santos's farmland, charred eucalyptus trees stretched across hundreds of metres.

Cars struggled to drive down a narrow road strewn with blackened tree trunks and scorched branches.

In the neighbouring village of Paco, locals said they had never seen anything like it.

Although homes were spared, the flames devoured a few dilapidated houses, outbuildings, blueberry plantations, beehives and agricultural land.

One resident denied accusations that the neglect of locals had triggered the fires.

"Contrary to what is being said, most people had cleaned their land," said Luis Henriques, a 49-year-old resident and former computer engineer who changed his career to farming.

Henriques said smothering heat and strong winds were likelier culprits for the disaster.

"What happened is unprecedented! We saw an exceptional combination of phenomena," he added.

Another resident, Joaquim Maia, only had time to move his van before he helplessly watched the contents of his garage -- a motorbike, tools and firewood -- burn to ashes, after surrounding pine trees went up in flames.

"I didn't sleep for more than 33 hours," said Maia, a 63-year-old locksmith.

Even his vegetable patch was ravaged.

"I would never have thought", he said.

"If we get assistance from the state, so much the better -- if not, we will demolish and rebuild."

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