A news agency has reported that a large forest fire ignited on Saturday in central Portugal. The agency also claimed multiple lives were lost which marks this as one of the worst disasters in the country’s recent history. Help to the stricken area has been offered from across Europe. The European Union has promised firefighting aircraft and Spain has already sent two planes to pitch in to the disaster aid. The Portuguese government has sent 700 firefighters along with 260 soldiers to fight the fire.
NASA’s Terra satellite collected this natural-color image with the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer, MODIS, instrument on June 18, 2017. Actively burning areas, detected by MODIS’s thermal bands, are outlined in red. Smoke pours out of the fiery region and drifts north. Smoke is also seen drifting into Spain as well. NASA image courtesy Jeff Schmaltz LANCE/EOSDIS MODIS Rapid Response Team, GSFC. Caption by Lynn Jenner with information from The Washington Post.