Given the increasing number and severity of forest fires this year’s Safe Communities Portugal launches today a new initiative aimed at creating greater awareness of the risk of fires, as well as the various weather conditions that increase the risk to public safety.

Entitled “Daily Safety Checks” it encourages people to check each day to ascertain, where there are fires, the daily fire risk, any flooding or other occurrences as well as the UV and weather alerts, so people can adjust their activities accordingly.

This is aimed at all communities and visitors to help gain access through a “one stop shop”, to the main government sites that contain information that people need to know in order to keep safe.

This can be accessed from the home page on the Safe Communities Portugal website, through a set of lights. It then takes visitors to the page where access to all the relevant safety information can be accessed through the appropriate link.

David Thomas President of Safe Communities Portugal said “It is very important that people get into the habit of making daily checks, particularly if venturing into the country areas, in order to ensure they are not putting themselves at increased risk, through example forest fires in summer and flooding in winter. This also helps the emergency services as in the event of forest fire for instance the number of potential victims can be reduced.

These areas can be avoided by simply checking the conditions beforehand. Likewise it is important that people especially visitors understand the dangers of prolonged exposure to high levels of UV”. The aim of this initiative is to support government efforts to create awareness and help the community gain access easily to public safety information.

On the same page is a direct link to all the emergency numbers and hotlines in case of emergencies.

The information can be found along with our public safety advice on www.safecommunitiesportugal.com