The National Union of Firefighters – Madeira delegation (SNBS), has expressed its full “solidarity and support for the populations affected by the fires.”
Human and material resources in the area of protection and relief “are always limited and exhaustible in the face of adverse circumstances such as those” that have occurred in recent days, added Marco Fernandes (Member of the board), and that our Region has the “particularity of being isolated from the mainland, which does not allow, at least immediately, the concentration of more means of support and reinforcement, obliging the regional political and institutional coordination bodies to carry out an adequate and realistic management of all existing and available means.”
Praising the role of the air assets that exist in the Autonomous Region of Madeira, as well as the respective teams, stating that they “carried out the initial interventions, contributing with great merit to the extinction of the initial outbreaks or ensuring conditions of containment until the arrival of the means of an expanded attack”. However, he reinforces, “as prone with the recent fires, Madeira needs more than one form of aerial firefighting means.”
However, he criticised those, who throughout the year, fail to be responsible for the state of the island. “In truth,” he said, “there is little point in having physical and human resources if the land is not cleared and its risk mitigated as much as possible. It is necessary to work and invest more and more in prevention to reduce the frequency of events like these,” he concluded.
The JM headline this morning, states, that those areas affected will not fully recover until 2026.
Samantha Gannon
info at madeira-weekly.com
