ROUGH CUT (NO REPORTER NARRATION) STORY: Thousands of Portuguese firefighters struggled on Thursday (August 11) to control nearly 200 forest fires after flames killed at least four people on the mainland and the island of Madeira the previous day. Aerial footage from Spanish TV agency Wikono showed the scale of destruction left by the fire in Madeira's capital of Funchal. gSome 260 people remained in makeshift shelters on Thursday, but the regional government said that all tourists were either back in their hotels or had been transferred to others. A five-star resort near Funchal had been completely destroyed by fire. On mainland Portugal, over 4,200 firefighters backed by 30 aircraft, including several sent by Italy, Spain and Morocco, were trying to put out blazes that had been set off amid a heat wave and fanned by strong winds to scorch mostly the wooded north of the country. Police have said that various fires were lit by arsonists and they arrested several suspects, including one in Madeira. Provisional data from the Forestry Preservation Institute, cited by local media, showed that blazes destroyed about 260 square km (100 sq miles) of forests just in the first nine days of August, which is more than in some full years recently. Summer forest fires are common in Portugal, which in 2003 suffered its deadliest blazes, killing 19 people and destroying around 10 percent of the country's forests on over 2,100 sq km.
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