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Fires rage in northeastern Spain
Madrid, Aug 6, 2006 Firefighters waged an uphill battle against forest fires in Spain and Portugal at the weekend, tackling new blazes after bringing dozens of others under control, officials said Sunday. Thousands of hectares of forest in Spain's northeastern region of Galicia went up in smoke, and a number of blazes were still raging on Sunday, a regional government spokeswoman said. Twenty-six forest fires were brought under control but another 22 were still active, the spokeswoman said, adding that at least 27 of the blazes had been started intentionally. Dozens of people were evacuated from the village of Muros, just west of La Coruna, and the area was on high alert as three fires raged there. In northern and central Portugal, some 500 firefighters were deployed early Sunday to battle seven forest fires, three of which had begun overnight in searing temperatures, rescue services said. A major fire has been brought under control after raging since Friday in Aguiar de Sousa, near the northern town of Paredes, they said. Portugal has been on high alert for forest fires since Wednesday, and Saturday was the worst day of the year, authorities said. The last four summers have seen fires devour some 870,000 hectares (2.1 million acres) of forest land in Portugal. Temperatures were expected to reach 42 degrees Celsius (107 Fahrenheit) in Santarem, north of the capital Lisbon. In Spain, a fire in Cercedo, north of Santiago de Compostela, on Friday killed two people trapped in their car and destroyed 3,000 hectares of countryside, the spokeswoman said. The area destroyed by the other fires will not be known until satellite images are analysed, she added. Two fires that had burned through 1,300 hectares in the northwestern region of Catalunia since Friday were brought under control early on Sunday. Community Email This Article Comment On This Article Related Links Bringing Order To A World Of Disasters When the Earth Quakes A world of storm and tempest
Quake hits off remote Japanese islands
Tokyo, Aug 6, 2006 An earthquake with a magnitude of 5.8 on the Richter scale was registered Monday off a group of remote Japanese islands, meteorologists said. |
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