The speed the fire travels has made fighting it even harder

"We were only there to show what was happening, but we could not help but get involved," said Andre Antunez, a reporter for SIC TV news, who has been covering the fires this summer.

"It is the most traumatic thing you can see with this story - standing with local people as they watch their homes being burnt down in front of their eyes."

Just before the flames reached their houses, Andre has more than once helped villagers salvage their most valuable possessions.

By all accounts, it is the speed and unpredictability of the forest blazes that once again seem to have defeated the authorities here. Once the fire begins, the landscape is entirely at the mercy of the winds that gust through the high valleys.

Huge blackened swathes of withered eucalyptus, pine and olive trees are left, as if a burning motorway has been run through the landscape. Actual roads are no barrier - the flames jump from one side to the other without problem.

This is something never seen before here. It is like a monster that comes towards us Elder Silvano Volunteer firefighter

And that includes dual carriageways across this central province of Santarem, where half-melted traffic signs are some of the scars.

Fire crews I came across in the fire station at Abrantes were clearly exhausted.

It was the sheer scale of the operation and their lack of numbers that depressed them.

"It's very hard," said Elder Silvano, a volunteer firefighter who is working around the clock.

"I've been many times near the fires - fires that we have here every year - but nothing compared to this year. This is something never seen before here. It is like a monster that comes towards us.

Villagers boost the firefighters' ranks as flames threaten their homes

"Wherever there is a situation where danger is, there is nothing you can do because the forest is so close. The trees are so close... sometimes it is impossible to stay near the flames.

"We have about 750 sq km (466 sq miles) of terrain in this municipality, half of that burned in three days. It is just something unimaginable."

The local authorities are struggling with the fact that the fires are here and have spread so quickly, and that incidents are so far apart.

Their firefighting resources are more than stretched, meaning half the work sometimes has to be done by local people, who are occasionally reduced to beating at flames with tree branches as the fire approaches their homes.

Pana da Costa, deputy president of the regional council in Abrantes, said money that was badly needed for local education and services was being channelled into the firefighting effort instead.

Fire arrests

He stressed the tragedy for those who live off the land, whose land has been left scorched.

They sell wood, rear livestock and make honey for a living, he said - and it could be up to 15 years before their forests return to normal. Some of them, Mr Da Costa said, have lost everything.

He also confirmed that several "suspicious pieces of equipment" had been found in the woods around his town. He means fire-starting equipment and spoke of slow-burning fuses.

More than 100 suspected arsonists have been arrested in Portugal so far this year.

Eight people have been detained in the last few days - two of them minors and one a former firefighter.