LISBON, Portugal (AP) — More than 100 wildfires stretched thousands of firefighters to the limit in northern Portugal on Wednesday, with seven deaths since the worst spate of fires in recent years spread out of control over the weekend.
Portuguese Prime Minister Luís Montenegro declared a state of calamity for the hardest-hit areas late on Tuesday, invoking powers to mobilize more firefighters and civil servants. He also called on police investigators to redouble their efforts to find those who started the fires and pledged help for those who have lost their homes or have been evacuated.
Click to Gallery
LISBON, Portugal (AP) — More than 100 wildfires stretched thousands of firefighters to the limit in northern Portugal on Wednesday, with seven deaths since the worst spate of fires in recent years spread out of control over the weekend.
Clouds of smoke drift with the strong wind as fires rage on the hills around Sever do Vouga, a town in northern Portugal that has been surrounded by forest fires, Tuesday, Sept. 17, 2024. (AP Photo/Bruno Fonseca)
A fire burns on a hillside near Sever do Vouga, a town in northern Portugal that has been surrounded by forest fires, Tuesday, Sept. 17, 2024. (AP Photo/Bruno Fonseca)
Fires rage on the hills around Sever do Vouga, a town in northern Portugal that has been surrounded by forest fires, Tuesday night, Sept. 17, 2024. (AP Photo/Bruno Fonseca)
A fire rages on the hills around Sever do Vouga, a town in northern Portugal that has been surrounded by forest fires, Tuesday night, Sept. 17, 2024. (AP Photo/Bruno Fonseca)
Wildfire advances near Sever do Vouga, a town in northern Portugal that has been surrounded by forest fires, Tuesday, Sept. 17, 2024. (AP Photo/Bruno Fonseca)
A woman tries to extinguish the flames near Sever do Vouga, a town in northern Portugal that has been surrounded by forest fires, Tuesday, Sept. 17, 2024. (AP Photo/Bruno Fonseca)
Firefighters work to control a fire next to warehouses in Sever do Vouga, a town in northern Portugal that has been surrounded by wildfires fires, Monday, Sept. 16, 2024. (AP Photo/Bruno Fonseca)
A car drives past a road closed by police as a wildfire burns close to it, near Sever do Vouga, a town in northern Portugal that has been surrounded by forest fires, Monday night, Sept. 16, 2024. (AP Photo/Bruno Fonseca)
Vehicles drive past a fire burning by the road near Sever do Vouga, a town in northern Portugal that has been surrounded by forest fires, Monday night, Sept. 16, 2024. (AP Photo/Bruno Fonseca)
“We are well aware that these difficult hours are not over yet,” Montenegro told the nation in a televised address. “We have to continue to give everything we have and ask for help from our partners and friends so that we can reinforce the protection of our people and property.”
The European Copernicus satellite service said that over 15,000 hectares (37,000 acres) had been scorched and a combined 13 kilometers (8 miles) of fire fronts had been detected as on Tuesday night. It added that an area home to 210,000 people was exposed to the fire risk.
The hot, dry conditions behind the outbreaks in Portugal coincided this week with flooding in central Europe. The European Union said Wednesday that the juxtaposed extreme weather phenomena are proof of a “climate breakdown. ”
Spain’s military sent 240 soldiers and vehicles from its emergency response battalions specialized in combating fires to its neighbor.
Four water-dumping planes from France, two from Spain and two from Italy were deployed after answering an appeal to help their fellow EU member. Morocco likewise responded to a request by Portugal with two water-dumping planes that arrived on Wednesday.
“The thick smoke produced by most of these fires is making it very difficult for air units to operate," said Civil Protection official André Fernandes. “We are still at high risk for forest fires over the next 48 hours.”
Thick grey smoke and the smell of burnt wood reached some 85 kilometers across the border into northwest Spain.
Montenegro made a special call for security forces to pursue both arsonists and any individuals who started a fire out of negligence. Portuguese national police said that they have arrested seven men suspected of having started wildfires in recent days. Authorities have prohibited the use of heavy farming equipment to reduce the risk of inadvertently starting a blaze.
Among the hardest hit areas is the district of Aveiro, south of the northern city of Porto, but several major blazes were also raging out of control in other wooded areas.
Authorities have yet to release figures for property damage or the number of evacuees, but Portuguese state broadcaster RTP has shown charred houses in rural villages and local residents trying to battle flames with buckets of water, hoses, and even large tree branches. Other televised images showed visibility reduced to a few meters as orange smoke enveloped the terrain.
Three firefighters died in their vehicle on Tuesday, while another had succumbed to what authorities called a “sudden illness” while on duty over the weekend. Three civilians have also perished, according to civil protection authorities. Health services have attended to 10 seriously wounded people and another 49 people with minor injuries, Fernandes said.
Portugal was devasted by massive fires in 2017 that killed over 120 people.
Experts link the fires to both climate change and the abandonment of traditional farming and forestry professions that helped keep rural areas clear of underbrush that is now fuel for fires.
Joseph Wilson wrote from Barcelona, Spain. Teresa Medrano contributed from Pontevedra, Spain.
A fire rages on the hills around Sever do Vouga, a town in northern Portugal that has been surrounded by forest fires, Tuesday night, Sept. 17, 2024. (AP Photo/Bruno Fonseca)
Clouds of smoke drift with the strong wind as fires rage on the hills around Sever do Vouga, a town in northern Portugal that has been surrounded by forest fires, Tuesday, Sept. 17, 2024. (AP Photo/Bruno Fonseca)
A fire burns on a hillside near Sever do Vouga, a town in northern Portugal that has been surrounded by forest fires, Tuesday, Sept. 17, 2024. (AP Photo/Bruno Fonseca)
Fires rage on the hills around Sever do Vouga, a town in northern Portugal that has been surrounded by forest fires, Tuesday night, Sept. 17, 2024. (AP Photo/Bruno Fonseca)
A fire rages on the hills around Sever do Vouga, a town in northern Portugal that has been surrounded by forest fires, Tuesday night, Sept. 17, 2024. (AP Photo/Bruno Fonseca)
Wildfire advances near Sever do Vouga, a town in northern Portugal that has been surrounded by forest fires, Tuesday, Sept. 17, 2024. (AP Photo/Bruno Fonseca)
A woman tries to extinguish the flames near Sever do Vouga, a town in northern Portugal that has been surrounded by forest fires, Tuesday, Sept. 17, 2024. (AP Photo/Bruno Fonseca)
Firefighters work to control a fire next to warehouses in Sever do Vouga, a town in northern Portugal that has been surrounded by wildfires fires, Monday, Sept. 16, 2024. (AP Photo/Bruno Fonseca)
A car drives past a road closed by police as a wildfire burns close to it, near Sever do Vouga, a town in northern Portugal that has been surrounded by forest fires, Monday night, Sept. 16, 2024. (AP Photo/Bruno Fonseca)
Vehicles drive past a fire burning by the road near Sever do Vouga, a town in northern Portugal that has been surrounded by forest fires, Monday night, Sept. 16, 2024. (AP Photo/Bruno Fonseca)
WASHINGTON (AP) — Vice President Kamala Harris on Wednesday criticized Republican Donald Trump 's promise to deport millions of people who are in the United States illegally, questioning whether he would rely on massive raids and detention camps to carry it out.
Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, told the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute’s annual leadership conference that the nation can find both a pathway to citizenship for those who want to come and at the same time secure the border.
“We can do both, and we must do both,” she said.
Trump, for his part, leaned heavily on his alarmist message on immigration as he held a rally in Uniondale on New York's Long Island, focusing the bulk of his remarks on the subject.
“We’re just destroying the fabric of life in our country. And we’re not going to take it any longer. And you got to get rid of these people. Give me a shot," Trump said.
Both candidates took a break Wednesday from campaigning in the toss-up states that will likely decide the Nov. 5 election. The former president drew a large, roaring crowd, giving him a chance to show deep support even in a blue state.
He ripped into Democratic leadership in New York City and state, blaming them for homeless people living in what he called “horrible, disgusting, dangerous, filthy encampments,” and even the conditions on the New York City subway, which he called "squalid and unsafe” and promised to renovate.
“What the hell do you have to lose?" he said in asking for their votes.
Before heading out to the suburbs, Trump stopped at a Bitcoin cafe in New York City. Trump has recently embraced cryptocurrency and on Monday night helped launch his family's new cryptocurrency venture.
Harris harked back to the Trump administration's immigration policies as she bid for Hispanic support.
“While we fight to move our nation forward to a brighter future, Donald Trump and his extremist allies will keep trying to pull us backward,” Harris said. “We all remember what they did to tear families apart, and now they have pledged to carry out the largest deportation, a mass deportation, in American history.”
“Imagine what that would look like and what that would be? How’s that going to happen? Massive raids? Massive detention camps? What are they talking about?” she said.
Trump has promised to carry out “the largest deportation operation in the history of our country” if he's elected in November. He has offered no details on how such an operation would work.
Trump has focused on immigration as a top campaign issue and made it a key focus of his remarks Wednesday.
“Look at what's happening,” he told his crowd in New York. "Businesses that are fleeing, money draining out of your state and hundreds of thousands of illegal migrants sucking your public resources dry.”
Trump said he plans in the next two weeks to visit Springfield, Ohio, which has been the center of false accusations from the former president and his running mate JD Vance that members of the city’s Haitian community are abducting and eating cats and dogs. Trump also said he plans to visit Aurora, Colorado, where he says a Venezuelan street gang with a small presence in the city has taken over a rundown apartment complex. Aurora police say that’s not the case.
He has an advantage over Harris in opinion polling on whom voters trust to better handle the issue.
Meanwhile, the Teamsters labor union declined to endorse either Harris or Trump, saying neither had sufficient support from its 1.3 million members.
Harris had met Monday with a panel of Teamsters, having long courted organized labor and made support for the middle class her central policy goal. Trump met earlier in the year with a panel of Teamsters, and its president, Sean O’Brien, spoke at his invitation at the Republican National Convention.
Trump's rally Wednesday night was in Uniondale, an area that could be key to Republicans maintaining control of the House. His party is trying to protect 18 Republicans in Democratic-heavy congressional districts that Joe Biden carried in 2020, particularly in coastal New York and California, and going on offense to challenge Democrats elsewhere.
Long Island in particular features one of the most closely watched races, between first-term Republican Rep. Anthony D’Esposito and Democrat Laura Gillen. D’Esposito is a former New York Police detective who won in 2022 in a district that Biden won by about 15 percentage points in 2020.
Trump posted Tuesday on his Truth Social platform that the GOP has “a real chance of winning” New York “for the first time in many decades." In that same post, Trump also pledged that he would “get SALT back,” suggesting he would eliminate a cap on state and local tax deductions that were part of tax cut legislation he signed into law in 2017.
The so-called SALT cap has led to bigger tax bills for many residents of New York, New Jersey, California and other high-cost, high-tax states, and is an important campaign issue in those states, particularly among those New York Republicans serving in districts Biden won.
Harris' speech to the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute marked the second day in a row that she has tended to constituencies considered key to the Democratic Party.
On Tuesday, she sat for an interview in Philadelphia with members of the National Association of Black Journalists. She decried Trump’s rhetoric and said voters should make sure he “can’t have that microphone again.” She has trips planned later in the week to Michigan, Georgia and Wisconsin.
Trump is attempting to return to his campaign cadence after Sunday's apparent assassination attempt as he golfed in Florida. On Tuesday, he traveled to Flint, Michigan, and has not appeared to alter plans for upcoming trips to the nation's capital and North Carolina later in the week.
His running mate, Ohio Sen. JD Vance, held an event in Raleigh, North Carolina, on Wednesday.
Meg Kinnard can be reached at http://x.com/MegKinnardAP
—-
Kinnard reported from Houston and Colvin reported from Uniondale, New York. Associated Press writers Darlene Superville in Washington and Michelle L. Price in New York contributed to this report.
Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump, speaks during a campaign event, Wednesday, Sept. 18, 2024, in Uniondale, N.Y. (AP Photo/Frank Franklin II)
Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump speaks at a campaign event at Nassau Coliseum, Wednesday, Sept.18, 2024, in Uniondale, N.Y. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump, speaks during a campaign event, Wednesday, Sept. 18, 2024, in Uniondale, N.Y. (AP Photo/Frank Franklin II)
Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump speaks at a campaign event at Nassau Coliseum, Wednesday, Sept.18, 2024, in Uniondale, N.Y. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump, speaks during a campaign event, Wednesday, Sept. 18, 2024, in Uniondale, N.Y. (AP Photo/Frank Franklin II)
Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump arrives to speak at a campaign event at Nassau Coliseum, Wednesday, Sept.18, 2024, in Uniondale, N.Y. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump makes a campaign stop at Pubkey Bar and Media House, Wednesday, Sept.18, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris waves to the crowd as she leaves at the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute (CHCI) Leadership Conference, at Ronald Reagan Building in Washington, Wednesday, Sept. 18, 2024. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)
Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris speaks at the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute (CHCI) Leadership Conference, at the Ronald Reagan Building in Washington, Wednesday, Sept. 18, 2024. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)
Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris arrives at the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute (CHCI) Leadership Conference, at Ronald Reagan Building in Washington, Wednesday, Sept. 18, 2024. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)
Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris speaks at the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute (CHCI) leadership conference, Wednesday, Sept. 18, 2024, in Washington. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)
Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump makes a campaign stop at Pubkey Bar and Media House, Wednesday, Sept.18, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris speaks at the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute (CHCI) Leadership Conference, at the Ronald Reagan Building in Washington, Wednesday, Sept. 18, 2024. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)
Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris Vice is interviewed by National Association of Black Journalists members Tonya Mosley, and Gerren Keith Gaynor, with moderator Eugene Daniels, at the WHYY studio in Philadelphia, Tuesday, Sept. 17, 2024. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)
Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump speaks during a town hall event at the Dort Financial Center, Tuesday, Sept. 17, 2024, in Flint, Mich. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris boarding Air Force Two, Monday, Sept. 9, 2024, near Philadelphia International Airport, in Philadelphia, Tuesday, Sept. 17, 2024. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)
Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump on stage with Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders during a town hall event at the Dort Financial Center, Tuesday, Sept. 17, 2024, in Flint, Mich. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
