Viseu, Portugal, Aug. 17, 2025 (Lusa) - Lack of visibility is preventing water bombers from working on the only active front of the fire that syayted in Sátão and Trancoso, facing Vila Nova de Foz Côa, the person in charge of the fight told Lusa news agency.
"We're having difficulty, because we have the air resources available here, the fixed-wing [planes], but we can't, in other words, we have no visibility and there are no safety conditions for them to enter," the commander on the ground, David Lobato, told Lusa at around 12 noon.
The sub-regional commander for Médio Tejo, who took command of the "Sátão/Trancoso complex" today, said that a helicopter flight was made to analyse safety and "the pilot said that there was no safety".
"It's a handicap to our strategy, but we have to wait for the conditions to improve so that it's safe" for the planes to fight what he calls front three of this fire, which started in two places, in Sátão and Trancoso.
David Lobato added that this "active front has inaccessible access by land", which is why "there is this difficulty in fighting it", as well as "hoping that the wind rotation in the afternoon doesn't cause the work that has already been done there to flare up again".
At the moment, he said, the fire, which "is divided into three fronts, has "two that have already been resolved, the one in Sátão and the one in Sernancelhe", both in municipalities in the district of Viseu.
Front three is focused on Mêda, Vila Nova de Foz Côa, Fornos de Algodres and Trancoso, municipalities in the district of Guarda, "and that's the one that hasn't had its perimeter controlled yet, so it's still active and even divided into two".
"These two fronts aren't very big, but we haven't managed to circumscribe them yet, precisely because of the difficult accesses," emphasised commander David Lobato.
The night's work allowed "some windows of opportunity, with little humidity, but there was some, and it was possible to extinguish most of the two fronts" that were resolved.
This fire originated from two fires - Sátão (Viseu district) and Trancoso (Guarda district) - and on Friday it became one, spreading to 11 municipalities in the two districts.
The 11 municipalities are: Sátão, Sernancelhe, Moimenta da Beira, Penedono and São João da Pesqueira (Viseu district); Aguiar da Beira, Trancoso, Fornos de Algodres, Mêda, Celorico da Beira and Vila Nova de Foz Côa (Guarda district).
The Vila Boa fire, in the parish of Ferreira de Aves, in Sátão, was alerted at 01:03 on Wednesday, and on the same day reached the municipalities of Sernancelhe, also in the district of Viseu, and Aguiar da Beira, in the district of Guarda.
The alert for the Freches fire, in the municipality of Trancoso, Guarda district, came a week ago, on the 9th, at 17:21.
The official website of the National Emergency and Civil Protection Authority (ANEPC) lists the resources distributed among the two original fires.
At 12:20 p.m., 658 firefighters were mobilised in Sátão, supported by 218 vehicles, and 425 firefighters were mobilised in Trancoso, with 141 vehicles.
In total, the fire mobilised 1,083 operatives, supported by 359 vehicles.
IYN/ADB // ADB.
Lusa
