Following the deafening silence into which a shocking television report appears to have been consigned, the municipality of Pedrógão Grande has come out calling for a much closer look at what lay behind June’s killer fires at Pedrogão Grande.
Says TSF radio, the town council of the region burnt black by fire wants military secret services to do the investigating – not just into the fire that killed 65 people on June 17, but into “some of the other large fires of the year”.
This was almost exactly the ‘bottom line’ of a documentary that came and seemingly went last month (click here).
Pedrógão Grande’s mayor Valdemar Alves says studies undertaken this far have not been “sufficient to explain things”.
But he falls short of further elaboration, says TSF, just saying that “it was not by chance that the south of Europe was ablaze at the same time (this year) and Spanish journalists talked a lot about international terrorism”.
Alves told reporters that he has thought “a lot, a lot, a lot about the reasons for a fire of this dimension” and has spoken too to many people who understand these things”.
It is time that “other mechanisms” were actioned, he said, still refusing to explain why he has cited particularly “military secret services”.
This is not the first time the word “terrorism” has been used to describe the work behind last summer’s fires.
Firefighters’ league president Jaime Marta Soares said as much months ago (click here).
But it is the first time a political figure – albeit regional – has used the “t” word, and it will be interesting to see where this now goes.
Early last month, TVI24 ran with a blistering exposé on State incompetence or “something else” that led to the 100-plus fire fatalities this year. It was largely sidelined by mainstream sources, despite the graphic accounts by eye-witnesses of ‘balls of fire’ apparently released by overhead planes.
