Almost all of the 2,000 Portuguese firefighters at a weeklong wildfire that killed 64 people this summer had something in common apart from the acute danger they faced: they were doing it for no pay and with equipment bought with public donations.
More than 90 percent of Portugal’s around 30,000 firefighters are volunteers. From lawyers to construction workers, they take time off work to risk their lives. What’s more, the volunteer fire departments where they work rely on donations and income from working at private events to pay for their equipment. When they are deployed to a wildfire outside their area of residence during the summer fire season, the government pays these intrepid men and women 1.87 euros ($2) an hour. And the volunteer firefighters usually hand over that meager stipend to their financially stretched fire departments.