Monitoring operations to make use of thermal imaging
At 6am this morning, Civil Protection sources were talking about a complex situation still remaining in the last problematic wildfire still blazing in the blighted north of the country. But by 9.15am this fire too had been ‘dominated.
Local mayor Paulo Almeida stressed “the fire has been declared contained”, but that this does not mean that the municipality is free from danger.
“It’s true that during the night weather conditions and the rain helped us (…), but there is still a danger of reignitions”.
This danger will be monitored using a thermal camera to detect areas most at risk, in order to prevent new outbreaks, Almeida added.
And so, after the most intense week of firefighting this year, blazes are allowing themselves to be brought under control. The ‘clear up operation’/ rebuilding is going to be a massive task – with government supports promised, but the details of which are still far from clear.
Some people have ‘lost everything’: a lifetime’s work and care gone in a raging roar on a scale that so many have said was beyond anything they have ever seen before.
Today is a National Day of Mourning for the victims of these fires: those that died (7 in total, although two died of heart failure), scores that have been injured, probably more who have seen their homes and/ or business destroyed – and the more than 121,000 hectares of forest land and its animal inhabitants.
The government has declared a State of Calamity in the dozens of boroughs affected by the fires, but how this speeds up response to the enormous level of damages remains to be seen.
Meantime, Expresso is running its cover story today dispelling the “thesis” put forwards by the prime minister that there were “private interests” behind many of these blazes, and the ‘coincidences’ that saw so many of them start at night.
According to security forces, writes the paper, “there is no proof of this”. Yes, there are arsonists (11 of which have recently been ‘caught’), but there is no proof that any of them were acting for “hidden economic interests”. A source for the GNR has conceded that “in theory, there could be cases like this, but authorities have never proved them. The declarations of the prime minister are not founded in direct facts or official reports”.
As for the nighttime ignitions, they are not necessarily all the work of arsonists. The source explained that many of them are “simple projections from another area affected by flames, which start a new blaze”.
Sometimes (indeed, invariably) these projections can initiate from “a great distance”.
In other words, the prime minister appears to have been latching on to a conspiracy theory, often revived in situations like this latest.
According to Expresso’s sources, today’s arsonists are very much along the lines of arsonists that came before them: people with mental disorders.
The text refers to the ‘author’ of the fire that began five days ago in Albergaria-a-Velha, and spread to Oliveira de Azeméis and Sever do Vouga, causing cataclysmic damages and losses. (Two of the lives lost over the last few days were people in Albergaria-a-Velha.) He was a 67-year-old agricultural worker, surprisingly with no criminal antecedents. Possibly, investigators will now learn he ‘did this before’ – but for now, the consensus is that 33% of fires are caused by arsonists, another 12% due to negligence.
Curiously, however, when talking of projections, none of Expresso’s sources referred to the abundance of pine trees and eucalyptus growing ‘wild’ in country areas which between them can send blazing projections over distances of up to 100 metres.
