The fire claimed 64 lives on the night of 17 June and left many more people injured, even as other similar-sized blazes in neighbouring municipalities killed no one.

The commission’s president, João Guerreiro, submitted its report to the speaker of parliament, Eduardo Ferro Rodrigues.

In the hours after the fire was reported, he said, orders should have been given to get residents out of villages around Pedrógão Grande. After a certain moment, he explained, “it became impossible” to fight the fire, due to its intensity.

In the report, the commission states that an earlier warning – at around 6pm on 17 June, or earlier – could have avoided most of the deaths in Pedrógão Grande. It would have been possible, it argues, with advance work in the regional command centre, which would have led to the mobilisation of the necessary resources, including the national guard, to ensure that residents did not meet their deaths as they sought to flee, as happened.

It notes that closing roads giving access to the N236-1 highway, where most of the deaths took place, might have been “even worse”, given that this could have claimed more lives, including that of guards themselves. Instead, an earlier order should have been given to evacuate villages threatened by the fires, or measures taken to ensure people did not leave their homes – in either case with the decision taken after “a suitable analysis of the situation, so as to foresee the potential behaviour of the fire [that had] begun more than five hours earlier.”

In another part of the report the commission identifies what it says were failings in the approach to fighting the fire in Pedrógão Grande.

The commission found that the fire was caused by electrical discharges through the electricity grid, while another in the neighbouring municipality, Góis, was caused by a lightning strike.