Fighting the flames once again mobilizes thousands of professionals and people themselves.
More then 4, 000 professionals were in the ground all over the country, including on the island of Madeira, fighting fires that plague the country since the beginning of August. Altogether more than 180 fires swept through thousands of hectares of forest and just to get an idea on the island of Madeira, in Funchal, 150 homes were consumed by flames, there is 3,078 housand hectares (ha) of burned ground and unfortunately there three victims to mourn, also Calheta burned 28% of its territory a total of 3,200 ha. In the mainland, to the north, a total of 16.660 ha of land were consumed by flames in the towns of Caminha, Arcos de Valdevez and Viana do Castelo. In the center, in Agueda and Anadia 10,328 hectares were burned, the fire São Pedro do Sul approximately burn a third or a quarter of its 250 square kilometers of its territory and in Arouca, in Aveiro district, 831 professionals have been mobilized and 256 terrestrial means and in total were destroy 17 housand hectares of land.
The European information system for forest fires (EFFIS) that analyzes satellite images that records the fires in real time from the beginning of the year until Friday, August 12th, states that only in Portugal already burned more than 101,000 hectares of forest, equivalent to 101,000 football fields. Only our country is responsible for half of the area burned in all 28 European countries have been buffeted by forest fires this year. The European Observatory also states that this average 2016 exceeds the burned areas in 2008 and 2015 stood at around 25 000 hectares burned, data that meets the doctoral thesis of Ricardo Ribeiro, defended in the European University in Madrid, in which he assessed the result of ten years of implementation of the National Plan for the Defense of Forest Fire as being negative and ineffective.
"Desertification is a critical risk factor that is never addressed. But there is a direct relationship between population density and burned area, large fires occur in inland areas where there was an exodus to the coast", told Lusa the responsible, who is also the president of the Portuguese Security and Civil Protection Technicians Association (Asprocivil). And he warned, "the paradigm of fire will change dramatically in the geographical and chronological point. It's just that, he said, climate change, fires will no longer be a summer problem and will also extend to other areas of country, far more spared ".
In the study of more than 600 pages, which admits might be published, defended as fundamental, prevention policies and remember that in 2013, burned down in Portugal half of all the area consumed by flames in Europe. One reason, he adds, is the "precariousness of the conservation of forests", together with the rural exodus, the construction of housing in hazardous locations, the effects of climate change and neglect of people. Ricardo Ribeiro proposes that the good practices of the population is subject of the education system and that there should be advertising campaigns. Firefighters should also have more training and should be created a public system of incentives for regional planning and biofuel cleaning, for which intervention teams should be created. Focusing on creating an Iberian market of biofuel, further "punitive action" implement permanent means of fighting fires from March, creating social measures for people up to 50 years to combat desertification, create tax incentives for securing young people in the field or invest in video surveillance are some of Ricardo Ribeiro proposals.
The official specifically argues that the same as for fire-fighting intervention teams are created to act in the dead of winter, creating intervention and prevention measures, and that the land along roads and houses are actually clean. "In this issue, there is prevention, response to fire, and the restoration of normality. But in Portugal, it focuses specifically on the response, forgetting the prevention and restoration of the forest," said Ricardo Ribeiro to Lusa, adding "Portugal was the European country least reforested in the last 20 years."
Nor does it appear that burn on average each year 150 000 hectares of forest, or in 2013, burned down almost half a million hectares, he recalled, adding that between 2002 and 2013 died because of the fire, 97 people, 51 of them firefighters. And even then, he told Lusa, no behavioral changes or there is an effective planning, forgetting politicians that when "close a health center, are to encourage people to go away." The fires, like those of recent days, causing an annual average loss "more than two hundred million euros", plus another 200 million in environmental and material losses, said the official.
