The world collectively gasped at the horrific scenes of furious flames and burnt-out vehicles, in which many people perished after trying to flee the fire as it spread at an alarming rate.
The government decreed three days of national mourning which started on Sunday for the victims; Portugal’s Prime Minister visited the scene on Sunday, and the President cleared his agenda until Tuesday.
The massive blaze is understood to have been caused by a dry-lightning strike on Saturday, a day when temperatures in many parts of the country exceeded 40 degrees Celsius.
For more than 48 hours firefighters from Portugal and international help worked tirelessly to bring the raging fire under
control.
The flames spread quickly from Pedrógão Grande(150 kilometres [90 miles] north of Lisbon) to three other nearby villages, in part due to the inland forest terrain, which is home to swathes of eucalyptus and pine trees, as well as other shrubs, dry at this time of year, which would have contributed to its rapid propagation.
Many of those trying to flee, perhaps unsure of which road to take, due to the flames and thick smoke, were horrifyingly engulfed by the inferno.
The latest figures put the death toll at 64, with several people still in hospital in a serious condition.
Over 1,000 firefighters were drafted in to tackle the flames.
By Tuesday firefighters were close to bringing the fire under control, but the persistently hot and windy conditions saw another forest fire start up in neighbouring Góis, leading to 11 surrounding villages being evacuated along with 56 people from an old people’s home.
On Wednesday morning, a spokesperson for the fire-fighters said 95 percent of the blaze had been brought under control.
Questions have been raised as to whether a lack in communications could have delayed the response, and whether more could in fact have been done, given the size and particular conditions of the Pedrógão Grande blaze.
Authorities have come under mounting criticism for not doing more to prevent what has been termed the country’s deadliest natural disaster in decades.
Water-dropping planes from Spain, France and Italy arrived as part of a European Union co-operation programme but they were grounded in some places because thick smoke limited visibility, officials said.
That left firefighters - backed by fire engines and bulldozers - to do the heavy work on the ground in temperatures that approached 40C (104F).
Firefighters brought some of the blazes under control, but other wildfires still raced through inaccessible parts of the area’s steep hills, the Civil Protection Agency said.
Scorching weather, as well as strong winds and woods that are bone dry after weeks with little rain, fuelled the blazes.
Villages dot the landscape, much of it now scorched.
Fire experts, meanwhile, pointed to a series of shortcomings in Portugal’s strategy of tackling wildfires, even though the summer blazes have been happening for decades.
There is a broad consensus that more work is needed on fire prevention, starting with forest clearing and the creation of fire breaks.
“In Portugal, the main factor in the scale of wildfires is the unbroken stretches of forest,” Paulo Fernandes, a forest researcher at Portugal’s Tras-os-Montes e Alto Douro University, said.
But he noted that around 90 percent of landowners have smallholdings, making it difficult for authorities to keep tabs on them all.
Xavier Viegas, a wildfire expert at Portugal’s Coimbra University, said Portugal needs a long-term strategy, but changes in government often mean changes in forest and farm policies.
He said a key measure would be the creation of “fire-resilient communities” who receive instructions on what to do when faced with a wildfire and to not act rashly.
“We need to prepare them so that they don’t go dashing off in cars,” Mr Viegas said.
Portugal’s leading environmental lobby group, Quercus, blamed the blazes on “forest management errors and bad political decisions” by governments over recent decades.
It rebuked authorities for allowing the planting of huge swathes of eucalyptus trees - the country’s most common and most profitable species - but one that is often blamed for stoking blazes.
Emergency services have also been criticised for not closing the road where most of the deaths occurred.
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 programme of property registration that seeks to ascertain which land is being neglected.
Not all of those reforms have come into force yet.
Statistics show that 35 percent of Portugal is covered by woodland, slightly above the EU average of 31 percent.
The forestry industry, especially the production of paper pulp, accounts for around 3 percent of the country’s GDP.
Questions have also been raised as to whether the Pedrógão Grande fire was actually started by a freak natural occurrence.
Portugal’s justice minister has said that the Public Prosecutor will “certainly hear” anyone with information that the fatal forest fire that began in Pedrógão Grande on Saturday is a case of arson. Confronted with the suspicions raised by the president of the League of Firefighters, Francisca Van Dunem said an inquiry is ongoing, even though the police had said that the fire had been caused by dry lightening. Police are now to call the top fireman to provide all the evidence he may have about a criminal origin to the fire.