Portugal PM demands answers as deadly forest fires rage

Portugal's prime minister led calls Tuesday to find out why a highway now dubbed the "road of death" -- where most of the 64 victims of a giant forest fire perished -- had not been blocked off, as questions mounted over the disaster management response.

More than 1,000 firefighters were still battling to control the flames which broke out in the central Pedrogao Grande region at the weekend and spread at breakneck speed to neighbouring areas.

A civil protection spokesman told AFP that a firefighting plane crashed near the village of Ouzenda while battling the blaze, but his agency's chief later denied the report.

"I confirm that no plane chartered by the civil protection authority... or in use across the country has crashed," civil protection head Vitor Vaz Pinto told a news conference.

He added that the confusion could have been down to gas canisters exploding at the reported crash site, while refusing to rule out that a private aircraft could have gone down.

Spain, France and Italy have sent a total of 11 water bombers to help the operation.

Portugal's Prime Minister Antonio Costa sought "immediate explanations" why the national 236 highway "had not been closed to traffic" and why it had been signalled by gendarmes as an alternative route after a nearby road had been sealed off, according to the Lusa national news agency.

Forty-seven of the 64 forest fire victims died on the N236 which has been branded the "road of death" or the "road of hell" by the local media.

Thirty of them burned to death in their cars, trapped by the flames.

A survivor told Portuguese television that gendarmes directed them to the N236 as an alternative to the nearby IC8 route which had been closed and which the gendarmes used themselves.

"When we arrived at the IC8, they told us we couldn't pass and directed us towards the N236. We thought that the road was safe but it wasn't," said Maria de Fatima.

"We couldn't see anything, we couldn't even see the road, just the flames and the pine trees falling on the road."

Costa also sought explanations into why the emergency services communications network had been interrupted amid media reports that the scorching heat had damaged antennae.

The blaze around Pedrogao Grande was expected to be under control shortly, Vaz Pinto said Tuesday.

Some people in the hamlets scattered through the rural region were unhappy with the response of the emergency services.

Father Jose Gomes, the priest in Figueiro dos Vinhos, told AFP that some locals had "lacked the support of the firefighters, and sometimes even water".

"There is a spirit of revolt towards the emergency services," he said.

Pensioner Jose Antonio Jesus Marques said he had been told on Saturday that the fire was about eight kilometres (five miles) away from his home in Carreira.

"I went to see it and in five minutes the fire was about 800 metres (yards) from my house," the 66-year-old said.

"The police came and that's the only thing we saw. Not a single firefighter," he said in the courtyard of his home, which he managed to save by throwing buckets of water at the approaching flames which ravaged the eucalyptus trees nearby.

In addition to the death, 157 people were listed as injured, including seven people in serious condition, one of them a child.

Details were emerging of the victims, many of whom were caught in their cars as they tried to flee. They included a four-year-old boy, Rodrigo.

His parents had left with him with relatives while on honeymoon and posted frantic messages on social media. The bodies of Rodrigo and his uncle were found burnt beside a car.

This can't be nobody's fault

As water-bombing planes made regular passes over the flames, there were growing suggestions that forestry practices and outdated emergency planning might have contributed to the disaster.

Press reports suggested the fire plan had not been revised for four years and that there had been communications problems while trying to contain the blaze.

Portugal's Publico newspaper reported that while the fire plan was meant to be revised every two years, lawmakers had not considered it a priority.

Climate change expert Joao Camargo pointed to the industrial-scale planting of eucalyptus, which is highly inflammable.

"These last decades, we have seen a rise in the frequency of forest fires" in Portugal, more than in Mediterranean countries, he told Publico.