portulaco
24.08.05, 15:26
I translated this article from this page:
sic.sapo.pt/online/noticias/opiniao/20050804+-+A+industria+dos+incendios.htm
Was written by José Gomes Ferreira from the TV channel SIC and points the
real reasons beyind this catastrophe in Portugal.
If some journalist from Gazeta will see this post please use it to denounce
tho the Poles and the world what is really going on
in my country.
Sorry for the mistakes but I had only one hour to do this.
"Officially it’s still running the version that there are not economical
reasons for the majority of blazes in Portugal. Officially it’s told that
this happenings are due to negligenge or for the simple pleasure to observe
the fire. Majority of firestarters can be mentally retarded.
But this tragedy doensn’t happen just because.
1- Why the aircraft fire combat in Portugal is TOTALLY given to private
companies, in opposition to what happens in other European Mediterranean
countries?
Why the testimonies from the population saying that this fires started in
several fronts after the passage of aircrafts are still without investigation
after so many years?
Why the Portuguese state has 700 million euros to buy two submarines and
doesn’t have half of that asset to buy half a dozen of Canadair water bombers?
Why there are Air Force pilots with formation to fight fires and they stay
all the summer without occupation in the military bases?
Why the military have ordered new helicopters without this ones beeing
prepared to the fire combat? Can the country afford that?
Most part of the wood used by the paper industry to produce paper pulp can be
used after the fires without great loses in the quality. Meanwhyle the
woodcutters pay only a third of the price to the forestal producers. Who his
earning with this business? Few weeks ago a reseller woodcutter was arrested
in the central part of the country, we was suspected of starting fires.
Strangly, the autorities are still saying that there are no economical
reasons in the fires…
3- If the autorities know about this cases, as many journalists in this
country, mostly those with formation in environment, they can point the lands
where few years ago forest fires happened and now are urban land or in way
of becoming like that.
4 – SIC TV channel and other media received anonimous letters and phone calls
like this: „While associative hunting and touristic reserves will exist in
Portugal, the country will keep on burning”. A clear revenge of those who
don’t want to pay to hunt in those spaces and want the return of the so
called „regime livre” (free haunting spaces)
Unfortunetly, in the North and Center of the country many fires are still
started in order that during the first rain falls the plants will be more
tender and atractive for the flocks.
About one and a half year ago, the former minister of agriculture wanted to
have an agreement with the 3 main portuguese TV channels, in order to avoid
many of the images of the fires to be broadcasted during summer. They’re
argument was that, more fire they saw in the screen, more the fire starters
would be motivated to commit crimes…
I was in the meeting. Of course the agreement was not accepted, but
personally I was infuriated. How it was possible that so many citizens in
this country where loosing they’re incomes in the forest – and even they’re
houses – and the political power was only worried with something perfectly
irrelevant?
Strangly, we are again confrontated with suggestions from the responsibles of
the state in order to avoid the brodcasting of images and fires devastating
the country.
There is a fire industry in Portugal, in wich responsibles don’t obbey to
any common organization but have the some goal – to destroy the forest
because they’re taking benefits from this kind of crime.
Strangly, the Portuguese State doesn’t do what it could and should do:
1 – To assume directly the aircraft resources to fight the fires as fast as
possible. To purchase the resources, cancelling, if necessary, other
contracts of military equipments.
2 – To distribute military personnel in the forests, during summer, in
permanent surveilance actions. (By the contrary, what is seen are occasional
actions of vigilance and combat to fires).
3 – To change the law for crimes regarding fire, increasing the punishments,
investigations and punish efectvely the criminal.
4 – To stricktlyphorbid all the constructions in the burned areas during the
periods previewed in the law.
5 - Encourage the cleaning of weeds, promoting the value of the residues,
woods and weeds, creating power plants adapted to this type of fuel.
6 - Having a clear notion of the causes for this tragedy and with simple but
effective measures, will be possible to believe that in a period of 20 years
the Portuguese landscape will not be the same as in Northern Africa. If
everything will stay as it is, the physical ressamblences with Morrocco will
be unavoidable in a short period."
José Gomes Ferreira
