Fighting forest fires: A summary of my summer
- Anthony Peters
- Jul 8
- 7 min read
Content warning; This story contains themes such as traumatic events, such as forced evacuation, anxiety, and climate catastrophe. Please read at your own discretion, and seek help when you are struggling with or triggered by one of the themes discussed at;
I live in the Portuguese countryside, in a valley at the end of a dirt track. In Portugal, forest fires (or wildfires) are very common during the summer months (1). In 2017, there was a massive wildfire which destroyed over 45,000 hectares (2). It came through my land but thankfully stopped a few metres from my house.
After the 2017 fire, it took a long time for all the plants and trees to grow back, but eventually they did, and the landscape returned from a sea of black, back to the beautiful Portuguese countryside that it had been beforehand; the memory of the fire gradually slipping into the distant past. Since 2017, there have been several wildfires in Portugal, but none to the same scale, and none that came close to where I live.
Then, on the 13th of August 2025, I checked the Portuguese fire tracking website (3) and noticed there was a fire about 15km from my house (4). I was a little worried, but hopeful that it would not come any closer.
The next day, things weren’t looking good. The fire was moving towards us, and in the afternoon, we decided to evacuate to the nearest village. Beforehand, we did our best to fire-proof the house, in case the fire made it to our land. Cutting flammable plants around the building, watering the ground to make it harder for the fire to burn through, placing buckets of water around the house to try to stop it. Then, we left.
In 2017, the whole process was over very quickly. We evacuated our house one afternoon, stayed a (mostly sleepless) night in the nearby village, and by the next morning the fire had passed through and burned everything (luckily, not our house). This time was different. It was hard to tell where the fire was at any point, – the area around where I live is very mountainous, and all that was visible from the village were plumes of smoke filling the sky. In the afternoon, we went up to a church on a hill above the valley where our house is, and from there we could see the fire. We watched as the fire narrowly missed several of our neighbours’ houses, on the other side of the river that runs through the bottom of the valley.
As we watched the fire tear through the landscape, leaving a charred wasteland in its wake, the possibility of our house burning down started to set in. I had been conscious of this fact since we first evacuated, and brought my most valuable possessions with me, but not all family members had. In the short term, we needed more clothes, as most of us had only brought one night’s worth. Some of us decided to go back to the house and bring as much as we could, in case it really did burn down.
Going back there was quite surreal, knowing that it might be the last time I could have seen my house intact. We took as many things as we could, and carried them back up to the church, where we stayed for a while longer, then headed back down to the village.
Later that night, we went back up to the church for another look. It was hard to tell what was where in the darkness, but one thing was clear: The fire was not far from the houses now. As we watched and waited, the fire seemed to die down a little. Only a small patch of flame remained. We sat in anticipation, hoping that that last flame would die out, and that the houses would be saved. After minutes of anxiously waiting, a tree suddenly caught alight, sending a column of flame into the sky. Not long afterwards, our neighbour’s tool shed went up in flames. The fire was still moving very slowly though, and it was getting late, so we all decided to go to bed.
That night, I had trouble sleeping. That whole day, I had still held out hope that our house would survive. Now, our chances were looking slim. I knew there was nothing I could do, but my dreams were filled with images of fire, as well as imagining what would have happened if we had gone into the valley and put out the fire when it was small.
I awoke early the next morning, anxiously awaiting news of what had happened in the night.
As it turned out, our neighbour (whose shed had burned) went back in the middle of the night with some others to put out the fire before it reached his house, saving ours as well.
It was over. Our house was safe, and there was nothing else to worry about. Later that day we went to the valley to assess the damage. One house had burned completely, but the rest survived. We had no water – the fire had burned the pipe supplying our house – so the best we could do was carry up bottles from the river. A few tree stumps were still smouldering and smoking, but I wasn’t too worried about them, they would go out eventually.
At some point while we were in the valley, we got a call from a group of people watching from the church, saying they could see a column of smoke rising from further down the valley, away from the houses. We went to look at it, and we saw that one of the smouldering tree trunks had set fire to some nearby shrubs that hadn’t yet burned. A couple of us tried to put it out, but it’s not as easy as it looks, with smoke in your eyes and intense heat everywhere. We poured the water we had on it, then went back for more. As we returned, the wind picked up, tripling the size of the flames and making it too dangerous to fight. We headed back towards everyone else and told them of the oncoming flames. As we did so, the wind began blowing in our direction, and I could see the fire making its way back towards the houses again. As we grabbed our belongings, ready to leave, the fire exploded in size, spreading to all of the places that hadn’t burned the previous night. The smoke was everywhere, starting to reach us. My dad wanted to go back and try to fight it, or at least set up defensive measures, but I could see it moving fast and knew that it would be upon us soon. I shouted to him to come back, and eventually he came with the rest of us back to the church. It was the right decision: by the time we made it up the other side of the valley, the fire had reached where we had been standing a few minutes before.
At this point, I was starting to panic. Just a few minutes ago, I was sure that the house and our land would be safe. Now, it seemed likely it would burn. With the sheer speed at which it grew from a few flames into a roaring wildfire, it seemed unstoppable. Our house wasn’t quite visible from the church though, so all we could do is guess where the fire was.
Suddenly, we noticed two fire engines heading down the track towards our houses. Normally the fire fighters stay in the villages, to keep the houses safe, but for some reason here they were. (I found out later that someone in the village had instructed them on how to get to the houses in our valley)
Soon after the fire trucks arrived, we went back into the valley to see if we could help at all. This time, the damage was much worse. The night before, the fire had barely touched our land, but this time about half of it was completely destroyed. Luckily the house was still intact, although one of the wooden beams holding up the balcony caught fire at the bottom, but somehow didn’t spread upwards.
Over the next few hours, we worked tirelessly, taking water from the river and using it to put out fires across the land, doing our best to ensure nothing else could catch fire. It was exhausting work, but necessary to ensure the safety of our house. By the end I could barely use my legs, and my feet were soaked from wading through the river to get water.
By some miracle, after all the destruction, including half of our solar panels burning, the electricity in the house was still working. In the freezer we found some ice creams which had managed to survive the whole ordeal, still frozen. We sat down and ate them, and I finally felt like the fire was over.
The fire didn’t come back to our land again, and no more damage was done. A few days later we moved back into our house. The surrounding landscape is back to being barren and blackened, but in Spring, new plants will pop up, and the land will start to regenerate again.
Unfortunately, this is not a one-off occurrence. As I mentioned, this happened before in 2017 (an even more extreme event), and it happens often across the country, although this is only the second fire that has reached my house. Wildfires are often exacerbated by climate change, but there are other issues as well (5). This isn’t just a climate problem, but a systemic one too. Something needs to be done to prevent another major fire in the next decade.
This is a personal recount of my experience in the 2025 wildfires, although many details have been omitted for brevity. I was very lucky to not lose my house, as many others did, and I am extremely grateful to the entire local community who organised anti-fire measures, without whom my house likely would have burned.
References
(1) Helena Alves and Joseph Wilson. (2024). Portugal declares a state of calamity as wildfires rage out of control. AP News. https://apnews.com/article/portugal-wildfires-calamity-climate-change-aveiro-bb8abc72159bcdf2ba1443168cfa7ba6
(2) Anabela de Sousa Dantes. (2017). Incêndio em Pedrógão Grande e Góis queimou quase 45 mil hectares. País ao Minuto. https://www.noticiasaominuto.com/pais/818299/incendio-em-pedrogao-grande-e-gois-queimou-quase-45-mil-hectares [Article in Portuguese]
(3) João Pina. (2015). Fogos.pt. https://fogos.pt/
(4) João Pedro Pincha, Sofia Neves and Miguel Dantas. (2025). Fogo de Trancoso com frente activa de seis quilómetros. Mais de 2500 operacionais combatem 22 incêndios. Público. https://www.publico.pt/2025/08/13/sociedade/noticia/incendios-ermidassado-dominado-vila-real-trancoso-continuam-activos-2143809 [Article in Portuguese]
(5) Zia Weise and Aitor Hernández-Morales. (2025). Wildfires are preventable. So why does the Iberian Peninsula keep burning? Politico. https://www.politico.eu/article/wildfire-prevention-iberian-peninsula-spain-portugal-climate-change/
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