Fires: Government plans to present a review of the Civil Protection model by the end of the year (C/AUDIO)

The Government plans to present, by the end of the year, the revision of the organic law of the National Emergency and Civil Protection Authority (ANEPC), announced today the Secretary of State for Civil Protection, Rui Rocha.

At the 150th anniversary ceremony of the Royal Humanitarian Association of Porto Volunteer Firefighters, Rui Rocha said that the Government's commitment is to present a proposal to revise the organic law of the National Emergency and Civil Protection Authority by the end of the year, to come into effect "from next year."

The minister stated that the Government has its own vision and ideas on this matter, but despite this, it is listening and gathering all contributions, and is currently focused on firefighting measures.

Regarding firefighting, Rui Rocha admitted that "not everything has gone well," and that it is also important to look at prevention.

"This Government has recently presented and approved the forestry law, and therefore it is a structural task that will take several years," he stressed.

The Secretary of State also highlighted that this year the country experienced severe weather conditions with high temperatures, tropical nights, strong winds, and zero humidity, factors that made fighting the fires difficult.

"I want to emphasize that the entire system has delivered an excellent response in terms of first-responder success rate. First-responder success is the system's ability to suppress fires within the first 90 minutes, and we have a 93% success rate," he said.

Rui Rocha assured that the Government will, in due course, assess what went wrong and if there are issues to be corrected, it will correct them.

Mainland Portugal has been affected by multiple large rural fires since July, particularly in the North and Central regions.

The fires caused four deaths, including a firefighter, and several injuries and totally or partially destroyed first and second homes, as well as agricultural and livestock farms and forest areas.

According to provisional official data, as of August 29, around 252 thousand hectares had burned in the country.