The municipalities at the highest risk of rural fires are located in the districts of Bragança, Braga, Vila Real, Porto, Viseu, Guarda, Coimbra, Santarém, Castelo Branco, Portalegre, Évora, Beja and Faro.

The Portuguese Institute of the Sea and the Atmosphere (IPMA) also placed the rest of the mainland at very high and high risk, with the exception of more than a dozen municipalities in the districts of Viana do Castelo, Braga, Porto, Aveiro, Coimbra, Leiria, Lisbon and Setúbal.

Alert situation

On 6 July, the Government decreed the extension of the alert situation in effect, from 00:01 on 7 July until 23:59 on 9 July in 10 districts of mainland Portugal, the Ministry of Internal Administration (MAI) informed in a statement.

The decision covers the districts of Vila Real, Bragança, Guarda, Viseu, Castelo Branco, Beja, Santarém, Portalegre, Évora and Faro and is justified by “the maintenance of the heat wave” and by “meteorological forecasts still of great adversity for the coming days in the districts of the interior of the country”, it reads.

The declaration simultaneously implies the prohibition of "access, circulation and stay" within certain forest areas and paths, as well as the carrying out of controlled burns, including authorised ones, and work in forest areas with machinery (except for firefighting) and in other rural areas "with the use of brush cutters with metal blades or discs, brush cutters, shredders and machines with blades or front shovels".

Excluded from the restrictions are works associated with feeding animals and cultivating fields, provided they occur in irrigated areas or areas without forests, are essential and cannot be postponed, and there is no risk of ignition; "the extraction of cork by manual methods and the extraction (harvesting) of honey", without incandescent material; and unavoidable civil works, with mitigation of the risk of fire.

Between sunset and 11:00 AM, it is also permitted to carry out "agricultural crop harvesting work using machinery, namely combine harvesters," and "forestry operations involving cutting, skidding, and transport," "provided that measures to mitigate the risk of rural fires are adopted and their execution is communicated to the territorially competent Municipal Civil Protection Service."