A group predominantly of Portuguese emigrés living in and around Sydney has delivered more than 30 tons of food and water to the victims of Australia’s raging bushfires.
The initiative ‘started with an idea and post on Facebook’, Ricardo Marques told Lusa. But it spread with almost the same speed as a bushfire.
Within weeks 12 lorry-loads of food, water, nappies and other ‘essentials’ were packed and ready to go to areas of New South Wales most affected by the raging infernos.
Marques’ haulage business delivered donations last Sunday, driving through some of the locations ravaged by the blazes.
“The destruction is devastating”, he told reporters. “These are the biggest fires that I can remember”.
Already 28 people have lost their lives while over 2,200 homes have been destroyed and an area larger than Portugal left blackened and eerily silent.
Media sources have stressed the ‘more than a billion animals’ killed, which has spurred the Portuguese group to considering a second collection drive, this time more focused on ‘supporting animals’.
Meantime, the army will now be distributing the food and water collected to ‘some of the more remote areas’ destroyed by the wildfires.
Here in Portugal, climate change activist and writer João Camargo warns that the fires should be a wake-up call for Portugal, which remains a ‘tinderbox’ thanks to hectares of uncontrolled inflammable eucalyptus.
Despite the so-called ‘forestry reforms’ implemented since the killer fires of 2017, this tiny country remains in the hands of the pulping companies which, he explains, are still extolling the virtues of eucalyptus plantations, distributing leaflets in schools claiming they can actually help combat global warming.
