The GNR has arrested 26 forest fire suspects this year, up until Thursday, the security force said, announcing that patrols will be reinforced as long as the risk of fire justifies it given the forecasts of heat and strong winds.
«The GNR, starting yesterday, September 13th, and until the fire danger justifies it, will reinforce visibility patrols aimed at preventing fires, throughout the national territory, due to the forecast of worsening fire danger», says the corporation in the note, listing the unfavorable conditions of rising temperature, strong winds and decreased relative humidity.
According to the Portuguese Institute of the Sea and Atmosphere, the gradual and unusual increase in temperature for September will occur until Monday.
The National Emergency and Civil Protection Authority has placed the northern and central interior regions, Alto Alentejo and Algarve under very high risk of rural fires.
In the statement, the GNR highlights that since the beginning of the year it has carried out more than 38 thousand patrols, which resulted in the identification of 361 suspects and the arrest of 26 for the crime of forest fire.
Since then, the GNR has recorded more than five thousand rural fires that have burned more than 15 thousand hectares of land.
More than half (53%) of the forest fires investigated by the GNR military are due to negligent use of fire and arson.
The GNR appeals to the population to «the importance of adopting safe behaviours, in forest and agricultural areas, on days of very high and maximum fire risk», and should avoid making fires or bonfires, burning or burning, launching rockets and balloons with lit fuses, fumigating or disinfecting apiaries, «unless the fumigators are equipped with spark retention devices».
The GNR also advises against the “circulation of tractors, machines and heavy transport vehicles that do not have a fire extinguisher, a spark retention system or flame arrestors on the exhaust pipes or chimneys”.
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