Three Firefighters Die as Portugal Battles Dozens of Wildfires

Firefighters try to extinguish a fire in a warehouse during a wildfire at Arrancada village, Agueda in Aveiro on September 17, 2024. (AFP)
Firefighters try to extinguish a fire in a warehouse during a wildfire at Arrancada village, Agueda in Aveiro on September 17, 2024. (AFP)
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Three Firefighters Die as Portugal Battles Dozens of Wildfires

Firefighters try to extinguish a fire in a warehouse during a wildfire at Arrancada village, Agueda in Aveiro on September 17, 2024. (AFP)
Firefighters try to extinguish a fire in a warehouse during a wildfire at Arrancada village, Agueda in Aveiro on September 17, 2024. (AFP)

Three Portuguese firefighters died on Tuesday in one of dozens of forest blazes ravaging the country's central and northern regions, bringing the death toll from the latest wildfires to seven people since Saturday, authorities said.

Portugal is fighting over 50 active wildfires on its mainland and has mobilized around 5,300 firefighters, as well as calling for European Union help.

Authorities have closed several motorways, including a stretch of the main highway linking Lisbon and Porto, and suspended train connections on two railroad lines in northern Portugal.

ANEPC civil protection authority commander Andre Fernandes told reporters that three firefighters from the Vila Nova de Oliveirinha fire brigade had died while fighting a fire in Nelas, a town about 300 km (190 miles) northeast of Lisbon.

Reuters footage overnight showed local residents pouring buckets of water on advancing flames near Nelas.

Fernandes' deputy Mario Silvestre said earlier the overall situation was "calmer but still worrying and complex ... with many villages and settlements being affected, and the teams very dispersed across this theatre of operations".

He spoke from the command center in Oliveira de Azemeis in the northwestern Aveiro district where a cluster of four blazes has caused the most damage so far, burning down dozens of houses, and where four people have died.

Fernandes said late on Monday the Aveiro fires that had burned through more than 10,000 hectares (24,710 acres) of forest and shrubland could engulf a further 20,000 hectares.

Portugal and neighboring Spain have recorded fewer fires than usual after a rainy start to the year, but both remain vulnerable to the increasingly hot and dry conditions that scientists have blamed on global warming.

Temperatures topped 30 degrees Celsius (86 degrees Fahrenheit) across the country over the weekend, when the fires first broke out and were fanned by strong winds.

Jorge Ponte of the meteorology agency IPMA told Reuters that Monday was "one of the worst days ever" for fire risk in Portugal, combining high temperatures even close to the sea, wind gusts that reached 70 kmh and very low humidity, all brought by an anticyclone.

These factors create "a cocktail of dangerous conditions," he said. The situation could improve by Wednesday afternoon, he added, with a chance of showers on Thursday, although the danger would still persist.

The government on Monday requested help from the European Commission under the EU civil protection mechanism, leading Spain, Italy and Greece to send two water-bombing aircraft each.



US Judge Orders Trump Administration to Reinstate Thousands of Fired Workers

US President Donald Trump speaks during his meeting with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, DC, USA, 13 March 2025. (EPA)
US President Donald Trump speaks during his meeting with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, DC, USA, 13 March 2025. (EPA)
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US Judge Orders Trump Administration to Reinstate Thousands of Fired Workers

US President Donald Trump speaks during his meeting with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, DC, USA, 13 March 2025. (EPA)
US President Donald Trump speaks during his meeting with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, DC, USA, 13 March 2025. (EPA)

A California federal judge on Thursday ordered six US agencies to reinstate thousands of recently-hired employees who lost their jobs as part of President Donald Trump's purge of the federal workforce.

The ruling by US District Judge William Alsup during a hearing in San Francisco is the most significant blow yet to the effort by Trump and top adviser Elon Musk to drastically shrink the federal bureaucracy. Government agencies are facing a Thursday deadline to submit plans for a second wave of mass layoffs and to slash their budgets.

Alsup's ruling applies to probationary employees at the US Department of Defense, Department of Veterans Affairs, Department of Agriculture, Department of Energy, Department of Interior and the Treasury Department.

The judge said the US Office of Personnel Management, the human resources department for federal agencies, had improperly ordered those agencies to fire workers en masse even though it lacked the power to do so.

“It is a sad day when our government would fire some good employee and say it was based on performance when they know good and well that’s a lie,” said Alsup, an appointee of Democratic President Bill Clinton.

Probationary workers typically have less than one year of service in their current roles, though some are longtime federal employees. They have fewer job protections than other government workers but in general can only be fired for performance issues.

Alsup ordered the agencies to reinstate workers who were fired over the last few weeks, pending the outcome of a lawsuit by unions, nonprofit groups, and the state of Washington.

He did not order the 16 other agencies named in the lawsuit to reinstate workers, but said he would promptly issue a written decision that could expand on Thursday's ruling.

A Veterans Affairs spokesperson declined to comment. A Department of Interior spokeswoman said the agency does not comment on litigation over personnel matters.

The White House and the other agencies did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The plaintiffs include the American Federation of Government Employees, which represents 800,000 federal workers. The union's president, Everett Kelley, in a statement said the decision was an important victory against "an administration hellbent on crippling federal agencies and their work on behalf of the American public."

25,000 WORKERS

Alsup last month had temporarily blocked OPM from ordering agencies to fire probationary employees, but declined at the time to require that fired workers get their jobs back. The plaintiffs subsequently amended their lawsuit to include the agencies that fired probationary workers.

About 25,000 workers across the US government had been fired as of March 5, according to a Reuters tally, and another 75,000 have taken a buyout. The Trump administration has not released statistics on the firings, and it was not immediately clear how many employees could be affected by Thursday's decision.

In the lawsuit before Alsup, the plaintiffs claim the mass firings were unlawful because they were ordered by OPM rather than left to the discretion of individual agencies.

OPM has maintained that it merely asked agencies in a January 20 memo to identify probationary workers and decide which ones were not "mission critical" and could be fired, and did not order them to terminate anyone.

The agency on March 4 revised that memo, adding that it was not directing agencies to take any specific actions with respect to probationary employees.

OPM has pointed to the updated memo and to press releases by agencies as proof that it had no control over agencies' decisions.

Alsup on Thursday told the US Department of Justice lawyer representing OPM, Kelsey Helland, that he did not believe that was true, and scolded the government for not presenting OPM's acting director, Charles Ezell, to testify at the hearing.

“I’ve been practicing or serving in this court for over 50 years and I know how we get at the truth, and you’re not helping me get at the truth. You’re giving me press releases, sham documents,” Alsup said.

Helland said it was common for presidential administrations to prevent high-ranking agency officials from testifying in court, and that the information provided by OPM in court filings was enough to prove that it never ordered agencies to terminate workers.

Along with the lawsuit in California, several other challenges to the mass firings have been filed, including cases by 20 Democrat-led states and a proposed class action by a group of fired workers.

The Merit Systems Protection Board, which reviews federal employees' appeals when they are fired, earlier this month ordered the Agriculture Department to reinstate nearly 6,000 probationary workers at least temporarily.