Mainland Portugal will remain on alert until Thursday, due to fire riskThe Minister of Internal Administration announced this Tuesday.
José Luís Carneiro spoke to journalists at the headquarters of the National Emergency and Civil Protection Authority (ANEPC), in Carnaxide, Oeiras, after a videoconference meeting with the ministers of National Defense, Labor, Solidarity and Social Security, Health, Environment and Climate Action and Agriculture and Food to reassess the situation.
The alert situation, the lowest level of response provided for in the Basic Law of Civil Protection, is in force in mainland Portugal from 00:00 on Monday and until 23:59 on this day, taking into account that the temperatures dropped, after the country has been in a contingency situation for seven days.
“It is expected that from the 23rd there may be a rise in temperatures“, said the minister, emphasizing that a new evaluation will be carried out on Thursday, to decide whether to maintain or increase the level of alert.
Asked about the reason why the Government decided to maintain the alert situation, José Luís Carneiro referred that the country does not find the combined risk levels that were planned for July 13 and 15 and that would justify the declaration of the contingency situation In the past week. He noted, for example, temperatures above 47 degrees, humidity below 10%, dry winds, 60-degree soils, and dry thunderstorms. “These are not the circumstances in which the country finds itself”he is stressed.
Regarding the possibility that some regions of the country are in a contingency situation and others in a situation of alert, the Minister of Internal Affairs said that, “at this time”, this issue has not been evaluated by the entities that comprise it. . the National Civil Protection System.
The Organic Law of Civil Protection establishes that “the declaration of alert situation, contingency situation and calamity situation may be communicated to any part of the territory, adopting an infra-municipal, municipal, supra-municipal, regional or national scope”.
José Luís Carneiro also recalled that with the alert situation, the prohibition of access, circulation and permanence within forest spaces, previously defined in the municipal plans for forest protection against fires, as well as in forest roads, rural roads and other roads that cross them, the prohibition of burning and burning the remains of exploitation, as well as the prohibition of carrying out work in forest areas using any type of machinery, with the exception of those associated with situations of extinguishing rural fires.
It is also prohibited to carry out work in other rural areas using brush cutters with metal blades or discs, brush cutters, shredders and machines with blades or front shovel.
However, the Minister of Internal Administration pointed out, this prohibition has an exception, which allows grain harvest between 07:00 and 11:00 and 18:00 and 23:00. “[Esta exceção] with a view to not losing the cereal harvests, which are scarce in the country, and to take advantage of these two days [até quinta-feira] opportunity and also remove materials that constitute a danger or threat of fire from the forest space,” he explained.
For this decision, he added, the Ministries of Agriculture and Environment were specifically consulted. At the proposal of the Ministry of Agriculture, the harvest can be carried out between 07:00 and 11:00 a.m., and not between 06:00 and 10:00 a.m., as was in force, to overcome “the difficulties felt” by farmers, namely the humidity of the cereals and the difficulties this caused for harvesting and processing.
Source: Observadora
