Spanish government will declare catastrophe zones
Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez said on Friday that the recovery and reconstruction of the areas affected by the fireworks will take months and years and thanked the help of European countries to fight fires.
“They demonstrate what Europe means, solidarity and commitment,” said Sánchez about the response to Spain’s request for help through the European Civil Protection mechanism.
Spain called this mechanism on August 11 and received fires, both air and human fires from nine European Union (EU) countries.
Through bilateral protocols there are still means of Andorra and Portugal in the fires in Spain.
“I thank all the countries,” said the Spanish government leader, who spoke to journalists in Asturias, in the north of the country, after visiting the command to combat one of the fireworks that reaches this region.
Asturias had this year an unprecedented wave of fires, with days when there were 17 simultaneous outbreaks in the region, including in the Picos de Europe National Park area.
Sánchez reiterated that the Government of Spain will declare next Tuesday, at the weekly meeting of the Council of Ministers, several of the areas of the areas affected by the fires, to start the process of assessment of damage and damage and “open the door” to reconstruction and recovery.
“A reconstruction that will take months if it’s not years,” he said.
The Spanish government leader also defended a “state pact” in relation to climate change and revealed that next Tuesday the executive will form an “interministerial commission” for this purpose.
“Climate emergency advances increasingly rapidly and the effects are increasingly serious,” said Sánchez, who defended that it is necessary to “resize and redefine all aspects related to mitigation and adaptation to climate change” and “transform state policies linked to climate emergency.”
Sánchez underlined the example of what happened in Asturias this year, a region that “had never recurrently had temperatures above 40 degrees [Celsius]”.
The fires in recent weeks in Spain have been burning close to 400,000 hectares, an annual record in the country, according to the, still provisional data, of the European Forest Fire Information System (Effis), which has been comparable since 2006.
Spain is the country of the EU with the highest burned area this year so far.
At a time when there is an exchange of accusations in Spain between central (socialist) and regional PP (right) governments about the mobilization and coordination of means to combat the fireworks, Sánchez also promised to bring this issue to the next conference of presidents (in which all the head of the national government and all presidents of the 18 autonomous regions are sitting).
In Spain are regional governments that have the protection of civil protection and fires, and may request means from the central state and ask the national civil protection to mobilize help from other autonomous communities.
The global situation of fireworks in the northwest and west of Spain (especially the regions of Extremadura, Castile and Leão and Galicia, all on the border with Portugal), continues to improve today, for the third consecutive day, the local authorities said.
The favorable evolution of the fires coincides with a descent of temperatures and an increase in relative humidity since Tuesday, after a 16-day heat wave.
Still, according to local authorities, they remain active close to 20 fires considered gravity (classified as level 2, on a scale that in Spain goes from zero to 4) in Galicia, Extremadura and Castile and Lion.
