AFP UK

Ireland was once the darling of the data industry but now has a de facto moratorium on new centres

Every time we make a call on Zoom, upload a document to the cloud or stream a video, our computers connect to vast warehouses filled with servers to store or access data.

Not so long ago, European countries were falling over each other to welcome the firms that run these warehouses, known as data centres or bit barns.

Wide-eyed politicians trumpeted investments and dreamt of creating global tech hubs.

But then the dream went sour.

The sheer amount of energy and water needed to power and cool these server farms shocked the public.

The industry sucked up 14 percent of Ireland’s power last year, London warned home builders that power shortages caused by bit barns could affect new projects, and Amsterdam said it simply had no more room for the warehouses.

Then things got worse.

The war in Ukraine helped spark an energy crisis across the continent, leaving consumers facing rocketing bills and countries contemplating energy shortages.

“Data centres will be a target,” critical blogger Dwayne Monroe told AFP, saying the focus would only grow if Europe cannot fix its energy crisis.

Grassroots campaigns and local opposition have already helped to halt projects this year by Amazon in France, Google in Luxembourg and Meta in the Netherlands.

The Irish government, while reaffirming support for the industry, put strict limits on new developments until 2028.

The data industry says it feels unfairly targeted, stressing its efforts to source green energy and arguing that outsourcing storage to bit barns has helped slash consumption.

– ‘Veil of shadow’ –

These arguments are playing out most spectacularly in Ireland.

Activists are campaigning on a broad range of topics and using local forums to push their case.

“They take up a huge amount of space but provide basically no employment,” says Madeleine Johansson, a Dublin councillor for the People Before Profit party, which is campaigning on the issue.

Johansson recently had a motion passed in her council area banning the centres, sparking an almighty row with the national government that is yet to be resolved.

Dylan Murphy of Not Here, Not Anywhere, one of several climate groups pushing the issue in Ireland, has filed a motion in his local council in Fingal calling for companies to reveal the kind of information they are holding.

“There’s a complete lack of transparency… about what data is actually being stored in these data centres,” he said, calling it a “veil of shadow”. 

The data industry says revealing that information would be impossible.

Michael McCarthy of Cloud Infrastructure Ireland, a lobby group, said activists had lost the argument on sustainability and were now throwing everything at the wall. 

“Data centres definitely are large energy users but they’re part of a cohort of larger energy users,” he said.

McCarthy and industry figures in other countries say the real problem is years of underinvestment in national energy infrastructure. 

He also pointed out that the industry in Europe had pledged to become carbon neutral by 2030.

And there are still countries hankering to get data firms to locate there — particularly Iceland and Norway.

– Questions over metaverse –

Against this backdrop, the tech industry continues to innovate new products that invariably require vast amounts of processing power and data storage.

Machine-learning tools, for example, are hugely energy hungry — Google said earlier this year they accounted for between 10 and 15 percent of its total energy usage.

The metaverse, an emerging concept for a 3D internet championed by Facebook owner Meta, would also be hugely energy intensive. 

Critical blogger Monroe reckons the metaverse will buckle under its own weight, partly because of its data requirements.  

“The construction of the metaverse would require Facebook to build out a distribution of data centres that would rival what Amazon, Microsoft and Google have done for their clouds,” he said.

Meta did not respond directly to questions about the metaverse but told AFP that it was “proud to build some of the most energy and water efficient data centres in the world”.

As far as the carbon footprint of such innovation goes, energy experts interviewed by AFP said it would be difficult to assess.

The metaverse, for example, could help to reduce emissions in other areas by reducing the need for travel.

An energy official who did not want to be named questioned whether data centres were the best target for criticism when cryptocurrencies were so wasteful.

While data centres used about one percent of global energy output in 2020, cryptocurrency mining used about half that amount, according to the International Energy Agency.

McCarthy said those who opposed data centres needed to reckon with just how embedded they had become in everyday life, particularly since the coronavirus pandemic.

“They facilitate how we can work and live online, that’s the reality of it,” he said.

Waves generated by Typhoon Muifa break along the coast in Hangzhou in China's eastern Zhejiang province on September 14, 2022

Typhoon Muifa on Thursday made landfall for a second time on China’s densely populated east coast, after causing the cancelation of all passenger flights at Shanghai’s two international airports as it hit land.

The storm — packing winds of up to 126 kilometres (78 miles) per hour — made landfall at 12:30 am (1630 GMT Wednesday) in Shanghai’s Fengxian district, state news agency Xinhua said.

Muifa had previously hit the city of Zhoushan in Zhejiang province on Wednesday, according to Xinhua.

China’s Central Meteorological Administration had issued its highest-level typhoon alert for the first time this year, saying Muifa would increase in intensity as it approached the coast.

Gale force winds and heavy rains are forecast along China’s eastern seaboard until Thursday morning, the weather agency said. 

“Relevant areas should pay attention to the prevention of flash floods and geological disasters that may be caused by heavy rainfall,” it added.

Shanghai Airport Group said in a social media statement that it “will announce flight adjustments at both airports to the public in a timely manner, in line with the typhoon’s impact”. 

The storm comes soon after Typhoon Hinnamnoor hit Shanghai and its neighbouring region last week, causing the suspension of Shanghai ferry services and school closures in parts of Zhejiang.

Zhejiang authorities had ordered all fishing vessels to return to port by noon Wednesday, closed schools in three cities, suspended passenger ferry routes and shut tourist attractions as the province braced for Muifa’s landfall.

Temporary emergency shelters have been set up around Shanghai, CCTV reported, as well as an emergency evacuation zone spanning over 30 kilometres along the city’s coastal area. 

Muifa is the 12th typhoon to hit China this year, according to state media.

Its impact is expected to gradually decrease as it moves further north inland on Thursday, CCTV said.

Ireland was once the darling of the data industry but now has a de facto moratorium on new centres

Every time we make a call on Zoom, upload a document to the cloud or stream a video, our computers connect to vast warehouses filled with servers to store or access data.

Not so long ago, European countries were falling over each other to welcome the firms that run these warehouses, known as data centres or bit barns.

Wide-eyed politicians trumpeted investments and dreamt of creating global tech hubs.

But then the dream went sour.

The sheer amount of energy and water needed to power and cool these server farms shocked the public.

The industry sucked up 14 percent of Ireland’s power last year, London warned home builders that power shortages caused by bit barns could affect new projects, and Amsterdam said it simply had no more room for the warehouses.

Then things got worse.

The war in Ukraine helped spark an energy crisis across the continent, leaving consumers facing rocketing bills and countries contemplating energy shortages.

“Data centres will be a target,” critical blogger Dwayne Monroe told AFP, saying the focus would only grow if Europe cannot fix its energy crisis.

Grassroots campaigns and local opposition have already helped to halt projects this year by Amazon in France, Google in Luxembourg and Meta in the Netherlands.

The Irish government, while reaffirming support for the industry, put strict limits on new developments until 2028.

The data industry says it feels unfairly targeted, stressing its efforts to source green energy and arguing that outsourcing storage to bit barns has helped slash consumption.

– ‘Veil of shadow’ –

These arguments are playing out most spectacularly in Ireland.

Activists are campaigning on a broad range of topics and using local forums to push their case.

“They take up a huge amount of space but provide basically no employment,” says Madeleine Johansson, a Dublin councillor for the People Before Profit party, which is campaigning on the issue.

Johansson recently had a motion passed in her council area banning the centres, sparking an almighty row with the national government that is yet to be resolved.

Dylan Murphy of Not Here, Not Anywhere, one of several climate groups pushing the issue in Ireland, has filed a motion in his local council in Fingal calling for companies to reveal the kind of information they are holding.

“There’s a complete lack of transparency… about what data is actually being stored in these data centres,” he said, calling it a “veil of shadow”. 

The data industry says revealing that information would be impossible.

Michael McCarthy of Cloud Infrastructure Ireland, a lobby group, said activists had lost the argument on sustainability and were now throwing everything at the wall. 

“Data centres definitely are large energy users but they’re part of a cohort of larger energy users,” he said.

McCarthy and industry figures in other countries say the real problem is years of underinvestment in national energy infrastructure. 

He also pointed out that the industry in Europe had pledged to become carbon neutral by 2030.

And there are still countries hankering to get data firms to locate there — particularly Iceland and Norway.

– Questions over metaverse –

Against this backdrop, the tech industry continues to innovate new products that invariably require vast amounts of processing power and data storage.

Machine-learning tools, for example, are hugely energy hungry — Google said earlier this year they accounted for between 10 and 15 percent of its total energy usage.

The metaverse, an emerging concept for a 3D internet championed by Facebook owner Meta, would also be hugely energy intensive. 

Critical blogger Monroe reckons the metaverse will buckle under its own weight, partly because of its data requirements.  

“The construction of the metaverse would require Facebook to build out a distribution of data centres that would rival what Amazon, Microsoft and Google have done for their clouds,” he said.

Meta did not respond directly to questions about the metaverse but told AFP that it was “proud to build some of the most energy and water efficient data centres in the world”.

As far as the carbon footprint of such innovation goes, energy experts interviewed by AFP said it would be difficult to assess.

The metaverse, for example, could help to reduce emissions in other areas by reducing the need for travel.

An energy official who did not want to be named questioned whether data centres were the best target for criticism when cryptocurrencies were so wasteful.

While data centres used about one percent of global energy output in 2020, cryptocurrency mining used about half that amount, according to the International Energy Agency.

McCarthy said those who opposed data centres needed to reckon with just how embedded they had become in everyday life, particularly since the coronavirus pandemic.

“They facilitate how we can work and live online, that’s the reality of it,” he said.

Waves generated by Typhoon Muifa break along the coast in Lianyungang in China's eastern Jiangsu province

All passenger flights at Shanghai’s two international airports were cancelled Wednesday, the airport operator said, as Typhoon Muifa made landfall on China’s densely populated east coast.

The storm hit the city of Zhoushan in Zhejiang province at around 8:30 pm (1330 GMT), state news agency Xinhua said, bringing strong winds and threatening flooding along the coast around Shanghai — an area home to Asia’s largest commercial port.

The highest wind speed recorded on landfall was 42 metres per second, making it the strongest typhoon to make landfall in China this year, according to state broadcaster CCTV.

China’s Central Meteorological Administration issued its highest-level typhoon alert for the first time this year, saying Muifa would increase in intensity as it approaches the coast.

Gale force winds and heavy rains are forecast along China’s eastern seaboard until Thursday morning, the weather agency said. 

“Relevant areas should pay attention to the prevention of flash floods and geological disasters that may be caused by heavy rainfall,” it added.

The typhoon is expected to move from Zhoushan, home to the busiest port in the world in terms of cargo tonnage, through the coastal provinces of Jiangsu and Fujian carrying gusts of up to 172 kilometres (107 miles) per hour.

Shanghai Airport Group said in a social media statement that it “will announce flight adjustments at both airports to the public in a timely manner, in line with the typhoon’s impact”. 

The storm comes soon after Typhoon Hinnamnoor hit Shanghai and its neighbouring region last week, causing the suspension of Shanghai ferry services and school closures in parts of Zhejiang.

Zhejiang authorities ordered all fishing vessels to return to port by noon Wednesday, closed schools in three cities, suspended passenger ferry routes and shut tourist attractions as the province braced for Muifa’s landfall.

Temporary emergency shelters have been set up around Shanghai, CCTV reported, as well as an emergency evacuation zone spanning over 30 kilometres (18 miles) along the city’s coastal area. 

Muifa is the 12th typhoon to hit China this year, according to state media.

Its impact is expected to gradually decrease as it moves further north inland on Thursday, CCTV said.

Fortune favours the bold: Research has found that shyer albatrosses are up to twice as likely to get divorced

Most albatrosses mate for life but shy males who avoid confrontation are more likely to get dumped, researchers said Wednesday, adding it was the first time personality had been shown to predict divorce in a wild animal.

Wandering albatrosses, which traverse the Southern Hemisphere and have the largest wingspan of any bird at more than three metres (10 feet), are among the most monogamous animals.

They can live for more than 50 years, and while they spend much of that time on the wing, they meet up every two years with the same partner to breed.

Divorce is a “super rare event”, occurring around 13 percent of the time, Ruijiao Sun, the lead author of a new study published in the journal Biology Letters, told AFP.

But “if they find that their breeding success is too low with a specific partner they may look for another one,” said the PhD student at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in the US.

To find out how an individual bird’s personality affects their likeliness of getting divorced, the researchers drew on a unique database.

Since 1959, scientists have been tracking a colony of wandering albatrosses on Possession Island, in the southern Indian Ocean’s Crozet archipelago.

“We put a stainless ring on the leg with a number,” marine biologist and study co-author Stephanie Jenouvrier told AFP.

“Because they’re not really scared we can approach very slowly and we can read the number,” she added, saying it allowed the team to “reconstruct the entire history of these birds”.

Sun said the birds “breed every two years because they take a whole year to rear their chick and it’s super energy-consuming, so they take a one-year sabbatical after to recover and they do not spend that time together”.

– Shy guys finish last –

Over more than a decade, the researchers measured the boldness of nearly 2,000 birds by observing how they respond to a human approaching their nest.

They found that shyer male albatrosses were up to twice as likely to get divorced than their bolder rivals — but no difference was found in females.

“We show for the first time the link between personality and divorce in a wild species, thanks to probably the best dataset in the world,” Sun said. 

Wandering albatrosses have “elaborate courtship processes”, the study said, as the birds raise up their wings, squawk and generally dance around.

Sometimes during the process, a pushy outsider male couple tries to cut in. That is when the shyer males avoid confrontation — and accept divorce.

However there are other factors affecting divorce rates, the researchers said.

There are more male than female albatrosses, because females tend to forage in areas where they are more likely to get caught up in fishing lines.

The surplus of males means that females quickly find a new mate, but it can take males more than four years, the study found.

Also, “individuals that are in a long-term relationship are less likely to divorce than the ones that are new to each other,” Jenouvrier said.

Last year research indicated that climate change could also be driving albatrosses to divorce, as the birds have to travel farther to find decreasing numbers of fish.

The health community is calling for a binding international treaty to phase out fossil fuels

Around 200 health organisations and more than 1,400 health professionals on Wednesday called for governments to establish a binding international treaty on phasing out fossil fuels, which they said pose “a grave and escalating threat to human health”.

A letter proposing the “fossil fuel non-proliferation treaty” said it could work similarly to the World Health Organization’s Framework Convention on Tobacco Control — except this time the harmful controlled substances would be coal, oil and gas. 

The WHO was among the health organisations from around the world who signed the letter. 

“The modern addiction to fossil fuels is not just an act of environmental vandalism. From the health perspective, it is an act of self-sabotage,” WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in a statement.

The letter called on national governments to develop and implement a legally binding mechanism that would immediately stop all future fossil fuel expansion, as well as phasing out existing production.

It emphasised that the transition should be carried out in “a fair and equitable manner,” and that high-income countries should support lower-income nations to ensure the change “reduces poverty rather than exacerbating it”.

Air pollution, mostly from burning fossil fuels, has been linked to the deaths of seven million people a year.

Climate change has also spurred more frequent and severe extreme weather events, which can have a lasting impact on health even beyond those initially affected by the disasters, including smoke from wildfires and diseases spread after floods. 

The letter also pointed to the heightened health risks faced by the workers who extract, refine, transport and distribute fossil fuels and related products.

Phasing out fossil fuels would prevent 3.6 million deaths a year from air pollution alone, the letter said, adding that “the same cannot be said for proposed false solutions, such as carbon capture and storage”.

– Either fossil fuels or health –

Diarmid Campbell-Lendrum, the head of the WHO’s climate change unit, said that “from a health point of view, you can’t fix a disease without calling out what is causing it”.

The call for a treaty was important because it did not “try to use false accounting or imaginary solutions to continue to prop up the burning of fossil fuels,” he told AFP.

“We can either have fossil fuels or we can have health — we can’t have both.”

Courtney Howard, an emergency physician in Canada’s sub-Arctic region who signed the letter, said that the city of Yellowknife had some of the worst air quality in the world when it was ringed by wildfires in 2014.

“We had a doubling of emergency department visits for asthma, a 50 percent increase in pneumonia and one of our pharmacies ran out of one of the breathing medicines,” Howard told AFP.

She said that phasing out fossils fuels is “something we need to do for everybody — for everybody’s kids.”

Jeni Miller, the executive director of the Global Climate and Health Alliance which helped coordinate the letter, called for international dialogue and negotiation to make the treaty a reality.

“The costs of inaction are increasing,” she said.

The health community is calling for a binding international treaty to phase out fossil fuels

Around 200 health organisations and more than 1,400 health professionals on Wednesday called for governments to establish a binding international treaty on phasing out fossil fuels, which they said pose “a grave and escalating threat to human health”.

A letter proposing the “fossil fuel non-proliferation treaty” said it could work similarly to the World Health Organization’s Framework Convention on Tobacco Control — except this time the harmful controlled substances would be coal, oil and gas. 

The WHO was among the health organisations from around the world who signed the letter. 

“The modern addiction to fossil fuels is not just an act of environmental vandalism. From the health perspective, it is an act of self-sabotage,” WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in a statement.

The letter called on national governments to develop and implement a legally binding mechanism that would immediately stop all future fossil fuel expansion, as well as phasing out existing production.

It emphasised that the transition should be carried out in “a fair and equitable manner,” and that high-income countries should support lower-income nations to ensure the change “reduces poverty rather than exacerbating it”.

Air pollution, mostly from burning fossil fuels, has been linked to the deaths of seven million people a year.

Climate change has also spurred more frequent and severe extreme weather events, which can have a lasting impact on health even beyond those initially affected by the disasters, including smoke from wildfires and diseases spread after floods. 

The letter also pointed to the heightened health risks faced by the workers who extract, refine, transport and distribute fossil fuels and related products.

Phasing out fossil fuels would prevent 3.6 million deaths a year from air pollution alone, the letter said, adding that “the same cannot be said for proposed false solutions, such as carbon capture and storage”.

– Either fossil fuels or health –

Diarmid Campbell-Lendrum, the head of the WHO’s climate change unit, said that “from a health point of view, you can’t fix a disease without calling out what is causing it”.

The call for a treaty was important because it did not “try to use false accounting or imaginary solutions to continue to prop up the burning of fossil fuels,” he told AFP.

“We can either have fossil fuels or we can have health — we can’t have both.”

Courtney Howard, an emergency physician in Canada’s sub-Arctic region who signed the letter, said that the city of Yellowknife had some of the worst air quality in the world when it was ringed by wildfires in 2014.

“We had a doubling of emergency department visits for asthma, a 50 percent increase in pneumonia and one of our pharmacies ran out of one of the breathing medicines,” Howard told AFP.

She said that phasing out fossils fuels is “something we need to do for everybody — for everybody’s kids.”

Jeni Miller, the executive director of the Global Climate and Health Alliance which helped coordinate the letter, called for international dialogue and negotiation to make the treaty a reality.

“The costs of inaction are increasing,” she said.

Ireland was once the darling of the data industry but now has a de facto moratorium on new centres

Every time we make a call on Zoom, upload a document to the cloud or stream a video, our computers connect to vast warehouses filled with servers to store or access data.

Not so long ago, European countries were falling over each other to welcome the firms that run these warehouses, known as data centres or bit barns.

Wide-eyed politicians trumpeted investments and dreamt of creating global tech hubs.

But then the dream went sour.

The sheer amount of energy and water needed to power and cool these server farms shocked the public.

The industry sucked up 14 percent of Ireland’s power last year, London warned home builders that power shortages caused by bit barns could affect new projects, and Amsterdam said it simply had no more room for the warehouses.

Then things got worse.

The war in Ukraine helped spark an energy crisis across the continent, leaving consumers facing rocketing bills and countries contemplating energy shortages.

“Data centres will be a target,” critical blogger Dwayne Monroe told AFP, saying the focus would only grow if Europe cannot fix its energy crisis.

Grassroots campaigns and local opposition have already helped to halt projects this year by Amazon in France, Google in Luxembourg and Meta in the Netherlands. 

The Irish government, while reaffirming support for the industry, put strict limits on new developments until 2028.

The data industry says it feels unfairly targeted, stressing its efforts to source green energy and arguing that outsourcing storage to bit barns has helped slash consumption.

– ‘Veil of shadow’ –

These arguments are playing out most spectacularly in Ireland.

Activists are campaigning on a broad range of topics and using local forums to push their case.

“They take up a huge amount of space but provide basically no employment,” says Madeleine Johansson, a Dublin councillor for the People Before Profit party, which is campaigning on the issue.

Johansson recently had a motion passed in her council area banning the centres, sparking an almighty row with the national government that is yet to be resolved.

Dylan Murphy of Not Here, Not Anywhere, one of several climate groups pushing the issue in Ireland, has filed a motion in his local council in Fingal calling for companies to reveal the kind of information they are holding.

“There’s a complete lack of transparency… about what data is actually being stored in these data centres,” he said, calling it a “veil of shadow”. 

The data industry says revealing that information would be impossible.

Michael McCarthy of Cloud Infrastructure Ireland, a lobby group, said activists had lost the argument on sustainability and were now throwing everything at the wall. 

“Data centres definitely are large energy users but they’re part of a cohort of larger energy users,” he said.

McCarthy and industry figures in other countries say the real problem is years of underinvestment in national energy infrastructure. 

He also pointed out that the industry in Europe had pledged to become carbon neutral by 2030.

And there are still countries hankering to get data firms to locate there — particularly Iceland and Norway.

– Questions over metaverse –

Against this backdrop, the tech industry continues to innovate new products that invariably require vast amounts of processing power and data storage.

Machine-learning tools, for example, are hugely energy hungry — Google said earlier this year they accounted for between 10 and 15 percent of its total energy usage.

The metaverse, an emerging concept for a 3D internet championed by Facebook owner Meta, would also be hugely energy intensive. 

Critical blogger Monroe reckons the metaverse will buckle under its own weight, partly because of its data requirements.  

“The construction of the metaverse would require Facebook to build out a distribution of data centres that would rival what Amazon, Microsoft and Google have done for their clouds,” he said.

AFP contacted Meta for a response.

As far as the carbon footprint of such innovation goes, energy experts interviewed by AFP said it would be difficult to assess.

The metaverse, for example, could help to reduce emissions in other areas by reducing the need for travel.

An energy official who did not want to be named questioned whether data centres were the best target for criticism when cryptocurrencies were so wasteful.

While data centres used about one percent of global energy output in 2020, cryptocurrency mining used about half that amount, according to the International Energy Agency.

McCarthy said those who opposed data centres needed to reckon with just how embedded they had become in everyday life, particularly since the pandemic.

“They facilitate how we can work and live online, that’s the reality of it,” he said.

Ambulances evacuate people from Picha, a village in Pedrogao Grande district, in 2017

Five years after Portugal’s deadliest wildfire, which claimed 63 lives, a court on Tuesday acquitted 11 people accused of negligent homicide over the tragedy.

The fires broke out in the central Leiria region during a heatwave in June 2017 and burned for five days, destroying 240 square kilometres (90 square miles) of hillsides covered with pine and eucalyptus trees.

A senior firefighter and several local officials were in the dock, alongside employees of a power company and a firm responsible for maintaining a road in the Pedrogao Grande district where around 40 of the victims died.

Another 44 people were injured.

While the court in Leiria found failings in the prevention and control of the forest fire, presiding judge Maria Clara Santos said the scale of the disaster was caused by a natural phenomenon of “unique and totally unpredictable” force.

Many of the victims died trapped in their cars while trying to escape the flames, which were fanned by violent winds.

The defendants had been accused of failing to prevent or combat the fire that swept through the rural area 200 kilometres (125 miles) north of Lisbon.

But the court said in a statement shared after the hearing that “it had not been proven that the deaths and injuries were the result, by action or omission, of the conduct of any of the defendants”.

Several of the victims’ relatives were in the crowded courtroom in Leiria city for Tuesday’s hearing.

– ‘Calm the families’ –

Less than six months after the Pedrogao Grande disaster, a new series of deadly wildfires broke out in the centre and north of the country, killing another 45 people.

Augusto Arnaut, who was commander of the Pedrogao Grande fire brigade at the time of the disaster in June, is accused of not taking action early enough to control the blaze before it raged out of control.

But the Portuguese Firefighters League issued a statement on Monday saying it believed Arnaut was innocent and had done all he could. 

And on Tuesday, around 100 uniformed firefighters formed a silent guard of honour for Arnaut outside the court.

Three executives from road maintenance company Ascendi could face prison too. 

Prosecutors said they had acted irresponsibly by not ensuring the clearing of vegetation from verges through which many victims sought to escape the flames.

An employee of the electricity distribution network could also face a stiff sentence because the fire was sparked by a discharge from a power cable above tinderbox scrub.

– Forests ‘neglected’ –

Several local officials from Pedrogao Grande, Castanheira de Pera and Figueiro dos Vinhos — the three worst-affected districts — are charged with failing to maintain the forests along the roads and under power lines.

Prime Minister Antonio Costa accepted that the state bore some responsibility in the fires of June and October 2017, which killed 117 people. 

The victims’ relatives received compensation worth a total of 31 million euros.

The Socialist leader promised to overhaul Portugal’s firefighting capacity, burying power lines and turning the largely volunteer fire brigades into professional forces.

But forestry engineer Paulo Pimenta de Castro told AFP the situation now was “worse than in 2017”.

“Many forested areas are just left neglected (and) there has been no root and branch reform to firefighting, just superficial changes,” he said. 

He gave the example of a wildfire just last month that destroyed another 240 square kilometres, this time in the protected Serra da Estrela Natural Park, also in central Portugal.

The Cedar Creek fire in western Oregon, where residents are under evacuation orders in the latest major blaze to scorch the American West

A wildfire raging out of control in Oregon grew in size Tuesday as residents faced evacuation orders and worsening air quality as multiple blazes scorch the US West.

Dozens of active fires in California, Idaho, Oregon, Washington and other western states have ravaged more than 1,200 square miles (3,100 square kilometers), highlighting the devastating effects of a two-decade-plus drought that has left the region parched.

Dense smoke blanketed towns in southwestern Oregon including the popular outdoor tourism gateway of Bend, as the Cedar Creek fire has now consumed 92,548 acres (37,450 hectares) — more than twice the size of the US capital Washington — with zero percent containment as of Tuesday, according to the Oregon State Fire Marshal.

Evacuations were ordered for Lane and Deschutes counties, although some of the orders have been eased amid cooler temperatures and gentler winds. More than 2,000 homes remained under threat, authorities said.

The inferno — which began back in early August — has turned skies an eerie orange, as more than 1,200 firefighters and other personnel converge on the steep mountainous terrain, much of it in US national forest land and hard to reach.

“Smoke continues to create unhealthy air quality, which will likely continue for several more days,” the state fire marshal’s office said in a statement.

Similar air quality alerts have been issued in Idaho and Washington due to fires in those states.

Scientists say the long-term drought has been worsened by human-made climate change.

Much of the countryside is parched, creating conditions for hot, fast and destructive wildfires.

An even larger blaze, the Double Creek Fire, was burning in northeastern Oregon where it has consumed 155,300 acres.

According to the National Interagency Fire Center (NIFC), more than 90 fires were currently burning across seven western states.

The Mosquito Fire, California’s current largest blaze, has now swept through nearly 50,000 acres in the Sierra Nevada Mountains, with several small nearby towns evacuated.

Firefighters south of Los Angeles were also working to contain the major Fairview fire, which has claimed two lives.