Portugal reinforces firefighting means with the EU Civil Protection Mechanism and agreements with Spain and Morocco

The Portuguese Prime Minister announced at the end of the Council of Ministers meeting that the EU Civil Protection Mechanism and bilateral agreements with Spain and Morocco will be activated to strengthen the means to fight fires in Portugal.

Luís Montenegro said the decision was taken "not because our capability is already worn down, but because all of our [mainland] territory is under severely high risk and we feel it is proper to have this boost from our allies in our fight against fires.

With this assistance, the Prime Minister explained, it will not be necessary to transfer the means between regions, keeping them spread throughout the country to be deployed at once.

The Prime Minister recalled that normally this mechanism is activated "when all our resources are being used, but now we have an exceptional circumstance where the entire territory is being affected in more or less the same way".

In Guimarães, where the Government meeting was held, the Minister of Home Affairs took stock of the active fires and the preventive measures; there is a maximum effort undertaken to avoid ignitions and respond in the quickest manner possible to keep the fires from evolving into large-scale, Luís Montenegro further stated.

The Government declared a state of alert for the entire mainland territory from 00h00 on Friday 3 July until 23h59 on Monday 6 July.

Declaring a state of alert implies, among other measures, raising the level of readiness for the GNR and PSP, reinforcing surveillance, supervision, behaviour deterrent rounds and general assistance for protection and relief operations, as well as raising the degree of readiness and deployment of medical emergency, public health, and social assistance teams, and the permanent mobilisation of forest firefighters allocated to the firefighting mechanism.

The measures resulting from the state of alert declaration can be found here.