(Lisbon) Portugal, still marked by deadly fires in 2017 that claimed more than a hundred victims, is preparing for a difficult year on the forest fire front, Prime Minister Antonio Costa warned on Tuesday.
“The risk increases every year due to climate change” so that in terms of prevention, “we will never do enough”, warned Mr. Costa during a trip to central Portugal.
Even by managing “to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees by the end of the century”, in terms of forest fires, “the risks will still be multiplied by six” in Portugal, he recalled. .
The head of the socialist government and the Portuguese president, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, are expected late Tuesday afternoon in Pedrogao Grande, about 200 kilometers north of Lisbon, to participate in the inauguration of a memorial in tribute to the victims of the 2017 forest fires.
“The names of each of the 115 victims” of the gigantic forest fires that affected the country in June and October 2017 “have been engraved in a wall” gray, according to a press release from the company Infrastructures of Portugal (IP) responsible for the management of the road network.
This monument was built near National 236, nicknamed the “death road”, where dozens of people died on June 17 of that same year, most of them trapped in their vehicles while trying to flee.
For this year, the forest firefighting system currently has “65 planes, five more than in 2022”, Interior Minister José Luis Carneiro said on Monday.
The objective is to “prepare” for the summer period “which promises to be more difficult than 2022, with more staff, more land and air resources”, he explained.
Forest fires last year consumed more than 110,000 hectares, about four times more than the previous year.
Portugal, which suffered an exceptionally early heat wave in the spring, is on the front line in the face of climate change.
According to scientists, repeated heat waves are an unequivocal marker of global warming and these heat waves are expected to multiply, lengthen and intensify.