Portugal Safety and Security Report Wednesday 24th May 2023
Good morning – Firstly thanks to thank our great team of volunteers at Safe Communities Portugal who attended the 8th international Wildland Fire Conference in Porto where an E-Poster of our work was displayed; holding a meeting with the foreign community in Braga, having a stand al ALGARSAFE’23 in Portimão, the presentation on Risk awareness at ALGARSAFE’23 and the presentation at Eupheus International School in Loulé – an unprecedented number of events in such a short period of time for Safe Communities. Thanks therefore go to: Jane, Antonia, Susan, Jessica, Fernanda, Mike, Lilia for their hard work during the planning/implementation stages.
For us at Safe Communities Portugal attending the 8th International Wildland conference in Porto as a delegate was an enlightening experience but looking at the future a sobering one as far as wildfires are concerned.
The conference attended by around 1600 participants from 80 countries including three of us from Safe Communities Portugal listened to a selection of the 200 presentations covering amongst other: planning and preparation, prevention and fire suppression, risk handling, communication and international co-operation.
The main theme of the conference was enabling an integrated management approach to wild fires involving not only governments, but also academia, civil society, industries and the community; the focus being more on prevention rather than suppression only, which had previously been the case. This may seem obvious, as if all fires could be prevented then there would be no need for suppression. However this is not the case and as we learned.
Globally recent extreme weather events have caused unprecedented damages and impacts on communities, economies and the environment. Climate change is the key driver behind the growing occurrence of extreme wildfires. Under projected warning, wildfire frequency and severity are estimated to increase, calling for a fundamental shift in wildfire management to focus on climate change adaptation and wildfire risk prevention.
We therefore all need to be prepared. As a first step we all need to understand the risks as without understand risk, we can’t manage it and be prepared.
This year will be a more complex year that last year, when in Portugal there were many fires over 80% being in the north.
The risks of fires extends extend well beyond southern Europe basin and last year there were wild fires in the UK and the Republic of Ireland, and as far north as Finland. At the wildland fire conference I spoke to a forestry director from Ireland and we discussed the fires that affected western Ireland last year, which proved difficult to extinguish, due to their remoteness. Having discussed with him he saw parallels with the fires we also experienced in the northern parts of Portugal last year particularly in Braganca and Sera da Estrela.
So sharing knowledge, experience and co-operation between countries is vitally important in tackling a common threat. In global terms, vulnerabilities have increased and that we are more and more likely – in various parts of the world – to have more complex and larger events and international cooperation is absolutely critical in this matter”.
For us in Portugal what can we expect this year? Well so far in April we have had record air temperatures and the type of weather conditions more associated with late June than April. All this means that we need to not only be prepared, but need to inculcate within the population a “culture of preparedness”, meaning that we have to live with fires, with the aim of reducing the impact on populations and communities.
Have a good and safe week ahead
News
Drought: excessive consumption of water and without authorization are a concern in the eastern Algarve
Golf courses with excessive consumption and irrigation without authorization must suffer water cuts in the event of restrictions on consumption in agriculture, defends the Association of Beneficiaries of the Sotavento do Algarve Irrigation Plan.
Golf courses with excessive consumption and irrigation without authorization must suffer water cuts in the event of restrictions on consumption in agriculture, warned the president of the Association of Beneficiaries of the Sotavento do Algarve Irrigation Plan.
Speaking to Lusa, the president of the association that manages the irrigation perimeter in the eastern Algarve, Macário Correia, warned that six golf courses were involved that consumed more than required and about 200 hectares of irrigation outside the irrigation perimeter. , but who use water without authorization.
“We have two critical situations, one is golf courses that use – in previous years – twice as much as they require, and we have an area of a few hundred hectares of agricultural irrigation outside the perimeter without authorization”, pointed out the former president of the Chambers of Tavira and Faro.
The irrigation association has “serious concerns about the situation”, because water consumption in this campaign is about 20% above the same period of the previous year and the Odeleite and Beliche dams have a lower storage level than last year. Macário Correia even stressed that the association has already communicated in writing, both to the golf courses and to farmers who are in areas not authorized to use water, that, given the situation of restrictions that may be imposed in the short term, they will have to “to count on it”.
The director of the association considered that the situation “is delicate” and guaranteed that he would also speak with the managers of the golf courses, because “it is very complicated” to have cases that required 300 cubic meters of water and used 600 and that “at this moment I they have already used 60% of the appropriation they require for the year”.
There are also at least 200 hectares of agricultural irrigation, outside the irrigation perimetre , which collect water inside the perimeter, but water outside without authorization.
“The water that exists in the reservoirs, first of all, is for drinking, it is for the urban cycle, then it is for agriculture and, within agriculture, if there is not enough for everyone, we have to cut it somewhere”.
At least 15 detainees and 29 defendants in GNR operation in Greater Porto
The operation involves more than 300 operators and is related to an investigation into thefts from homes, inside vehicles and commercial establishments across the country.
The GNR mega-operation that is taking place this Tuesday in the Porto district resulted in at least 15 people arrested, 29 accused, seizures of drugs, gold, clothing, food, ammunition, money, banknotes and cars, he added.
Speaking to Lusa, at 13:00, Lieutenant Colonel Adriano Resende, from the Maia GNR sub-detachment, explained that searches had been carried out so far in the municipalities of Vila Nova de Gaia, Maia, Matosinhos, Paços de Ferreira, Porto and Gondomar.
The detainees, he said, are between 25 and 85 years old.
“So far, and there is still another search to take place (…), 29 ammunition, a kilo of gold, hashish, three vehicles, 20,000 euros in cash, 50 euros in counterfeit banknotes, an unspecified amount of clothing, food (meat, cod, ham and shrimp), costume jewellery, branded watches and computer equipment”, he listed.
The operation, which involved over 300 operators and by 1:00 pm, had already resulted in 29 people being accused, including 15 arrested, two of whom were arrested in whilst caught in the act for possession of drugs, illegal possession of a weapon and counterfeit bills. .
Those involved would be part of a criminal network that was dedicated to theft from homes and commercial establishments across the country.