PEDROGAO GRANDE, Portugal (Reuters) - More than 1,000 firefighters were still battling Portugal’s deadliest forest blaze on Monday after it killed dozens over the weekend, and a fireman died from his injuries in a hospital, bringing the death toll to at least 63. 
 
 More than 70 people, including 13 firefighters, were taken to hospital on Monday with burns and injuries as the fires ravaged the central districts of Leiria and Castelo Branco. 
 
 Prime Minister Antonio Costa, who on Sunday visited the affected a mountainous area about 200 kilometers (125 miles) northeast of Lisbon, called it the biggest human tragedy in Portugal in living memory. 
 
 Despite government assurances that the first response by the emergency services was swift and adequate, media and residents questioned its efficiency and the strategic planning in a country which is used to wooded areas burning every year. 
 
 “So what failed this Saturday? Everything, as it has failed for decades,” read a headline in the newspaper Publico. It blamed a lack of coordination between services in charge of fire prevention and firefighting and poor forestry reserve planning. 
 
 Xavier Viegas, an expert on forest fires, said the blaze spread too quickly and violently for firefighters to respond in some villages, but the deaths have mainly shown shortcomings in communications to evacuate people in time. 
 
 At least half the victims died in their cars as they tried to flee along a local motorway. Many other bodies were found next to the road, suggesting they had abandoned their vehicles in panic. The firefighter who died on Monday had been helping people out of their cars when he was badly burned. 
 
 Related Coverage Portuguese shocked at deadly forest fires, struggle to understand 
 
 “It’s still hard to identify what failed, but it’s a bit of everything,” Viegas said. “Obviously, certain things that should have been done had not been done - especially in communicating with the population, telling them about the danger levels, areas to be avoided.” 
 
 An online public petition demanding an investigation into possible failures by the authorities has gathered 440 signatures. Some local residents said they had been without the support of firefighters for hours as their homes burned. Many blamed depopulation of villages that left wooded areas untended. 
 
 Other countries prone to forest fires have systems in place to warn people of danger. Australia, for example, revised its fire warning system after fires killed 173 people in 2009 and now uses text messages and emergency broadcasts to warn people. 
 
 “There’s an urgent need to organize that kind of alerting,” Viegas said. “Here, at best, someone from the parish council goes knocking on doors telling people to leave.” 
 
 Armindo Antonio, 67, was evacuated with his family on Sunday evening by civil protection workers who came to his village. He has no idea when he can go back and said he had received no information from authorities. 
 
 “All of this is so difficult to understand,” said Antonio, whose five family members had been housed in a packed old-age home with other evacuees. “It could have been our village.” 
 
 Civil protection commander Elisio Oliveira said the firefighting efforts were progressing well, but the fire was not yet under control. Water planes, including French and Spanish aircraft, flew overhead. Two army battalions were helping the emergency services. 
 
 Slideshow (20 Images) 
 
 “There is still a lot of forest that can burn,” said Rui Barreto, deputy chief firefighter at the makeshift emergency services headquarters in Pedrogao Grande, where the blaze began on Saturday. 
 
 Police said a lightning strike on a tree probably caused the blaze, in a region hit by an intense heat wave and dry, gusty winds that fanned the flames. However, the regional prosecutor still ordered a criminal investigation into the causes. Many forest fires in Portugal are caused by arson or carelessness. ||||| Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Drone footage shows burnt-out cars in the Pedrógão Grande area 
 
 Twelve people survived one of Portugal's deadliest fires by seeking refuge in a water tank after access to their village was cut off by the blaze. 
 
 The residents, including a disabled 95-year-old woman, spent more than six hours in the tank as the fire prevented them from being rescued. 
 
 "If it wasn't for this, we would all have died," one of the survivors said. 
 
 The fires, which police believe were started by lightning, killed 63 people, many of them dying in their cars. 
 
 The latest of the victims was identified as a 40-year-old firefighter who died in hospital. 
 
 Residents in some areas of central Portugal were still being evacuated as more than 1,000 firefighters tackled the blaze, which continued to rage on several fronts on Monday despite light rain. 
 
 Maria do Céu Silva was hailed as a hero after using her house's water tank to rescue the residents of Nodeirinho, next to the IC8 motorway, which was badly hit by the fire. 
 
 The idea, Ms Silva said, came while she tried to save her disabled mother. 
 
 "My husband told me to put her in the van but she couldn't get in by herself so she told me: 'Let me die on the floor'," she told Correio da Manhã newspaper. 
 
 "With the help of my son we managed to take her here." Her 81-year-old father also survived by hiding in the tank. 
 
 The winds were so strong, she said, that roofs of the houses were blown out. "It was like a horror movie." 
 
 Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption BBC Weather's Jay Wynne reports on the devastating wildfires in Portugal. 
 
 Eyewitness: Fire survivor Gareth Roberts 
 
 We found ourselves stranded in a village called Mó Grande, just off of the IC8 motorway; ourselves and others were directed there by an officer from the IC8. 
 
 As we drove up the mountain road you could see the flames jumping across from one side of the valley to the other. The accompanying wind threw branches at the car but you couldn't stop, you could feel the heat. 
 
 Eventually we reached the small village at a crossroads surrounded by fire. Locals and ourselves were crying, overwhelmed by the heat and speed of the fire. It was dark, so dark, among the flames. 
 
 The devastation was indescribable. People, bewildered, remains of homes burning uncontrollably, concrete posts exploding over roads. 
 
 Read on 
 
 Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Gareth Roberts: 'You could hear the roar of the fire coming... we just sat and waited to die' 
 
 Next to the village, 30 bodies were found inside cars, with another 17 next to the vehicles, on the N-236 road, which leads on to the IC8 motorway. The N-236 was being described as the "road of death" in Portuguese media. 
 
 A few kilometres north of Nodeirinho, 11 people died in the village of Pobrais. Local reports said a third of the population had lost their lives, many as they tried to escape the fire. A survivor spoke of the roads being blocked and of no-one coming to their aid. 
 
 Maria de Fátima Nunes and her husband were driving on the motorway when their car was hit by the fire. 
 
 "My husband was burned on the arm," she told SIC Notícias. "I got burned too, on the chest." 
 
 Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Residents watch on as their homes blaze in Pedrogao Grande 
 
 "There was fire at the top of the pine trees and they were falling over the cars. The fire was coming from all sides. The cars crashed into each other trying to escape." 
 
 The couple who were in the car behind them, she said, did not manage to escape and died. "I shouted for the woman to get out of the car, but she didn't. Her husband did, but died there." 
 
 Officials said on Monday that 135 people had been injured by the fires, including more than a dozen firefighters. 
 
 Image copyright Reuters Image caption The fire hit the central forested region of Pedrógão Grande 
 
 The fires began on Saturday in the Pedrógão Grande region during an intense heatwave and rainless thunderstorms, with temperatures of more than 40C (104F) in some areas. 
 
 Meanwhile, outbreaks were reported in two more central regions, Castelo Branco and Coimbra. There was some rain on Monday and temperatures dropped slightly, but the situation was described by civil protection officials as worrying. 
 
 Prime Minister António Costa visited some of the affected areas and urged people to follow the evacuation calls. ||||| Portuguese firefighters work to stop a forest fire from reaching the village of Figueiro dos Vinhos central Portugal, Sunday, June 18, 2017. Portugal's president says the country's pain "knows no end"... (Associated Press) 
 
 Portuguese firefighters work to stop a forest fire from reaching the village of Figueiro dos Vinhos central Portugal, Sunday, June 18, 2017. Portugal's president says the country's pain "knows no end" as it mourns at least 61 people killed in the deadliest wildfire in memory. (AP Photo/Paulo Duarte) (Associated Press) 
 
 PEDROGAO GRANDE, Portugal (AP) — More than 2,000 firefighters in Portugal battled Monday to contain major wildfires in the central region of the country, where one blaze killed 62 people, while authorities came under mounting criticism for not doing more to prevent the tragedy. 
 
 Reinforcements, including more water-dropping planes from Spain, France and Italy, were due to arrive as part of a European Union cooperation program, officials said. 
 
 However, giant clouds of smoke were preventing the deployment of water-dropping aircraft on wildfires in the central region of the country where 62 people have died in the runaway flames, officials said. 
 
 Civil Protection Agency commander Elisio Oliveira told reporters Monday morning that cooler night-time temperatures helped firefighters bring some blazes under control. 
 
 However, some of the wildfires are still racing through inaccessible parts of hill ranges about 150 kilometers northeast of Lisbon. 
 
 Portugal is observing three days of national mourning after the deaths Saturday night around the town of Pedrogao Grande, about 150 kilometers (90 miles) north of Lisbon, which is by far the deadliest on record. 
 
 Scorching weather, with temperatures surpassing 40 C (104 F), as well as strong winds and dry woodland after weeks with little rain fueled the blazes. The fire area is covered in dense woodland over steep hills. 
 
 Meanwhile, Portugal's leading environmental lobby group, Quercus, issued a statement Monday blaming the blazes on "forest management errors and bad political decisions" by governments over recent decades. 
 
 The association rebuked authorities for allowing the planting of huge swathes of eucalyptus , the country's most common and most profitable species — but one that's often blamed for stoking blazes. 
 
 Emergency services have been criticized for not closing a road where 47 of the deaths occurred as people fled the flames Saturday night. The government has acknowledged that the huge fires occasionally led to a breakdown in communications. 
 
 Wildfires are an annual scourge in Portugal. Between 1993 and 2013, Portugal recorded the highest annual number of forest fires in southern Europe, according to a report last year by the European Environment Agency. 
 
 The government announced a raft of new measures against wildfires in March. They included restrictions on eucalyptus plantations and a simplified and cheaper program of property registration that seeks to ascertain which land is being neglected. 
 
 Not all of those reforms have come into legal force yet. 
 
 Statistics show that 35 percent of Portugal is covered by woodland. The forest industry, especially the production of paper pulp, accounts for around 3 percent of GDP. 
 
 ___ 
 
 Barry Hatton reported from Lisbon, Portugal.
– "It was like a horror movie," says a survivor of Portugal's deadliest fire on record, and like in a horror movie, she survived by finding a good hiding spot. The BBC reports Maria do Céu Silva and 11 others made it through the fearsome blaze by hiding for more than six hours in the water tank outside her home in Nodeirinho, which sits adjacent to the IC8 motorway that ended up littered with bodies of those trying to flee. Silva says the idea came to her after she was unable to get her 95-year-old disabled mother in a van to exit the area. More than 2,000 firefighters continue to battle the fires, one of which killed 62 people some 90 miles north of Lisbon, as authorities are coming under mounting criticism for not doing more to prevent the tragedy, reports the AP. Portugal's leading environmental lobby group, Quercus, issued a statement Monday blaming the blazes on "forest management errors and bad political decisions" over recent decades. The association rebuked authorities for allowing the planting of huge swathes of eucalyptus, the country's most common and most profitable species—but one that's often blamed for stoking blazes. Emergency services have been criticized for not closing a road where 47 of the deaths occurred as people fled the flames. Wildfires are an annual scourge in Portugal: Between 1993 and 2013, Portugal recorded the highest annual number of forest fires in southern Europe, per a 2016 report by the European Environment Agency. Reuters reports that police believe the blaze began when lightning hit a tree.