In Nodeirinho, a hillside village of a few dozen people, 84-year-old Marta da Conceição said residents called the fire services more than 20 times for help on Saturday.
“Nobody came. They were up in the mountain or somewhere else,” she said. “Here it was up to God and the people.”
As the flames licked at her, burning her leg, she and her elderly neighbours survived by jumping into a water storage tank.
A British man living nearby also had a hair-raising escape.
Daniel Starling had jumped in his car and raced away as the flames bore down.
He came across a family of four elderly people and picked them up.
Mr Starling said he drove around fallen trees and even off the road in his quest to reach safety.
“We stopped at one point, because we did not know where to go, because there were flames everywhere. But I just carried on the only way that I knew. (It was) just flames over the car and the family and me screaming,” said the 56-year-old, from Norwich.
They stopped when they came to a policeman at a junction.
“The family,” Mr Starling said, “got out and they were kissing the car.”
Officials said 47 of the dead in Saturday night’s blaze died on a road as they fled the flames.