Firefighters on the Portuguese island of Madeira continue to battle the country’s worst wildfire since 2017.
Firefighters continue to battle a wildfire which has raged on the Portuguese Island of Madeira for a week and threatens a UNESCO-listed forest.
The country has not seen a fire of this scale since 2017, when it recorded its deadliest blazes.
Since then, the number of forest fires has gone down by more than half, mainly thanks to a prevention awareness campaign.
Tiago Oliveira, president of the Agency for the Integrated Management of Rural Fires (AGIF), says work began after the events of 2017.
“The Portuguese society was very traumatised by the fires and in the first year of the campaign in 2018, we focused on a clear message,” he says.
The idea behind “Portugal calls to you” was to urge everyone to work together to reduce the number of fires.
Now, the agency has launched a new campaign that will run until 2026 to further reduce these numbers.
“This year, we have had 3500 fires, which is a relatively good record, because people have really consolidated this knowledge in the rural areas,” says Oliviera.
He adds that it has been helped by the fact that it has also been a mild summer without much dryness, so there have not been many fires.
The new fire prevention awareness strategy, he says, is going to involve personalised door-to-door contact.
“It will also involve the Ministry of Education with campaigns in schools which will mobilise around half a million pupils over the next five years.”
Last year, fires were on a lower scale across Europe, destroying about 8,400 kilometre square of land. However, they disrupted water supplies, damaged infrastructure and agricultural land, and impacted tourism and local economies.
Oliveira says he believes that Europe needs a mechanism that will see forces from neighbouring countries operating in the same way.
“It’s not enough to send air resources from one country to another. When these assets arrive, they need to be coordinated with the forces on the ground and they need to work with common mechanisms.”
He says Canada and the United States do this very well, and Europe would do well to draw inspiration from their model.
Oliviera says there is also a policy dimension to the fight against wildfires, like those that the 2030 strategy seeks to use.
“Namely the Common Agricultural Policy, which allows farmers to better manage their forests and bring more attention to issues like abandoned land, agricultural practices that do not generate fire, and allow for vegetation that is always treated.”
To date, last year’s fire in Greece’s Evros region remains the largest ever recorded in the European Union.
