The Monchique fire still maintains two active fronts, one to the west, on the way to Casais, along the road to Marmelete, and another to the east, in the municipality of Silves, said today Patrícia Gaspar, 2nd national commander of the National Protection Authority Civilian and new operational responsible for fighting this fire.
Patrícia Gaspar, who was speaking at the press conference that took place at 20:00 today, at Escola EB 2,3 in Monchique, explained that, according to the «strategy defined in operational terms», the «great focus tonight» will be « on the perimeter lines [of the fire] where we still have hot spots, which it is important to consolidate».
Afterwards, he added, the "consolidation of the parts of that perimeter where the work is already taking place in a more favorable way will be carried out, either with recourse to the land resources of the fire brigades, or with the structured and organized reinforcement of the work of the tracking machines" .
The official underlined that this machinery does "a very important job", in "opening containment strips, which allow to reduce the spread of fire, but also create conditions for land resources to enter".
About the perspectives for this evening, Patrícia Gaspar revealed that «despite the wind, we have some chance of recovery in terms of humidity here, a factor that is favorable to us». A “temperature drop” is also expected, which, incidentally, is already happening.
To what Sul Informação he found that in the municipality of Silves the fire was in the Pedreira area, but the flames moved away from the inhabited area. There are crawler machines opening containment strips, to prevent the flames from going back and reaching the houses.
On the transfer of command of operations to a national level, Patrícia Gaspar assured that it was a “perfectly normal option” in operations with “some complexity”, which is “extending in time and space”, as is the case.
The operations system, he stressed, "provides that from level 5 onwards" there will be a "national command". “It's not a break, it's a continuity solution”. Patrícia Gaspar replaced today Vítor Vaz Pinto, district operational commander of the Algarve's Civil Protection, who has been responsible for fighting the fire that began on Friday in Perna da Negra, Monchique, and which, meanwhile, has spread to the neighboring counties of Odemira, Silves and Portimão.
At the moment, 1200 are on the ground, supported by 402 vehicles and 25 crawler machines. The 13 air assets that had been active throughout the day were withdrawn at nightfall.
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