“It's no use having illusions and thinking that this fire will be put out in the next few hours. It will still work in the next few days», warned António Costa.
The prime minister was on Wednesday at the weekly briefing of the National Civil Protection Authority and made a point of stressing that "many days of work are still needed for the fire in Monchique to be completely extinguished."
Until then, it is necessary “to take advantage of the windows of opportunity to fight it, which happen essentially at night and during the night”. And it is at that time that “the great combat effort” must be made.
For now, we must «continue to do the containment work that has been done». The prime minister even admits that the situation "should get worse" throughout today, due to weather conditions, namely "the strong wind, high temperatures and low humidity".
António Costa took the opportunity to defend the Government's strategy, which, to a large extent, included an incentive to clean up land.
“In the last six days we had 582 ignitions and 26 fires across the country, of which only one, the one in Monchique, reached large proportions”, he defended.
Monchique is, in his view, “the exception that confirms the rule”, since the “last days have shown that prevention is worth doing”.
«If this work had not been done, there would surely have been more ignitions, more fires and more dramatic consequences», believes António Costa.
Comments