“Next few months require structural measures” – IPMA president
IPMA president Miguel Miranda has spelt out what, up till now, has been lacking. The country needs to hear of structural measures in place to deal with what is coming. And what is coming involves “continued elevated temperatures, absence of rainfall and very elevated danger of wildfires”.
All these forecasts could have been announced weeks if not months ago. But up till now, contingency measures from authorities have been missing.
Miguel Miranda’s words followed a meeting today in which the ministers of the environment (Duarte Cordeiro), Internal Administration (José Luís Carneiro) and Agriculture (Maria do Céu Antunes) were present.
He said his objective is “not to be alarmist, but realistic – and act preventively.
“The situation is not one of drama, we have to see things calmly, but with anticipation”, he said. “Since February we have had little rain. The probability of rain between now and the summer is low and therefore we are going to have tension in many areas, in the environment, in supply, in dams, with fires.
“It is very important to understand that we are going to have a marathon and not a 100 meters race to get to September, October better than (we did) last year“, he warned.
Says Lusa, Miguel Miranda stressed that the fire danger will have high values, highlighting that everyone has to prepare for the summer and balance the economy with the lives of citizens.
“We have to move forward with structural measures. We cannot leave it until the end to implement measures that involve policies, but also the (behaviour of) citizens.”
Thus the country continues to wait to hear these structural measures.
