Pedrogao Grande, Portugal, March 27, 2026 (Lusa) - Pinhal Interior, in the centre region of Portugal, affected by the 2017 Pedrogao Grande wildfires, is concerned about the approach of summer, after the January storms left hundreds of kilometres of forest paths blocked and a dangerous build up of vegetation on the ground.
The local council conducted drone surveys to assess the area following Storm Kristin in Pedrógão Grande, and the findings have left the mayor, João Marques, concerned, as almost all forest tracks are blocked.
Marques said that teams of forest workers from the local producers’ association and the local authority’s machinery will soon begin clearance work.
However, he acknowledged that it would be difficult to address the full scale of the damage, even with an extended land-clearing deadline of 30 June granted to local authorities in disaster-hit areas.
He told Lusa that fire season was approaching, and they were very worried as the main forest routes were completely obstructed.
In Pesos, a village in the district, Fiona and Adrian Wisher have already begun preparing for the possibility of the fire reaching them.
“We have our water tanks full and we’ve been clearing the land,” says Fiona, who moved with her husband to Pedrógão Grande five years ago and who became acutely aware of the fire risk after experiencing the October 2017 fire in Tábua, in the region of Coimbra.
The couple from the UK have their land impeccably cleared, but next to it one can see fallen trees and a forest path blocked by wind-felled tree trunks.
“We are very aware of the risk. If a vehicle needs to get through, there’s no chance,” warned Adrian Wisher.
Jorge Cancelinha, the mayor of Ansião, a district hit by major fires in 2017 and 2022, noted that it would be impossible to clear the entire district and that he is now faced with blocked forest roads and many fallen trees.
“We’re going to focus on clearing forest tracks and working on fuel management strips,” he said, noting that the deadlines set for landowners to clear their land “are unrealistic”.
With 600 kilometres of forest tracks, Jorge Cancelinha says that everything has been done exclusively using local authority resources and warned that there is a lack of funds.
For the mayor of the Alvaiázere Parish Council, Carlos Pinto Trindade, this is his main concern at the moment: “In two months’ time, people will start talking about fires again and we have many forest tracks to clear.”
The local authority leader hopes that resources may be provided by central government, given that local authorities alone will not have the capacity.
For forest fire expert Domingos Xavier Viegas, “there is an urgent need to remove all or a significant portion of the wood that has fallen to the ground”.
“It is not just the trunks; it is the branches that are drying out and which represent an increase in biomass near the surface. If there is a fire outbreak, that biomass will be available to burn,” noted the author of a report on the Pedrógão Grande fire.
In addition to this risk, the expert notes that trees that have not completely fallen may act “as a ladder to carry the fire from the ground up to the treetops”.
"When the fire reaches the treetops, the biomass load is more exposed to the wind and releases even greater energy, making firefighting almost impossible."
Furthermore, blocked paths and roads make the initial firefighting efforts slower and more difficult, as well as potentially making the firefighters’ work more dangerous, he said.
“No effort is too great to carry out this clearing,” he stressed, noting that, in the case of Pinhal Interior, although it was not as badly affected by the bad weather as Leiria or Marinha Grande, its terrain increases the risk of fire.
JGA/MYAL // AYLS
Lusa
