Portugal’s interior minister resigns over wildfires response

Portuguese Interior Minister Constanca Urbano de Sousa

The Portuguese government minister in charge of emergency services resigned yesterday after 106 people were killed in wildfires this year.

Interior Minister Constanca Urbano de Sousa tendered her resignation and Prime Minister Antonio Costa accepted it, the government announced on its website.

Urbano de Sousa said in her resignation letter published on the website that she wanted to quit after 64 people were killed in a wildfire four months ago, but Costa asked her to stay. She repeated her request after 42 people died in another spate of wildfires last weekend.

She wrote that after last weekend, “though the tragedy was caused by multiple factors, I came to the conclusion that I could not continue for political and personal reasons.”

The wildfire deaths are by far the highest annual toll ever and have stunned Portugal. Silent protests are slated for next weekend in an effort to press the government into taking more decisive action.

Urbano de Sousa was under severe political pressure to quit. Official investigations into the June deaths, which occurred in one night, found numerous shortcomings in the official response — though they could be traced back to previous governments too.

The pressure over the deaths weighed heavily on Urbano de Sousa, who several times came close to tears when speaking in public about the tragedy.

Urbano de Sousa wrote that she has prepared the ground for policy changes expected to be adopted by the government next Saturday.

Meanwhile, Portugal began three days of national mourning yesterday [Macau time] over its 41 wildfire deaths amid widespread public anger.

Rain and lower temperatures helped emergency teams in Portugal and Spain bring under control most of the fires that raged over the weekend. In Galicia, in northwest Spain, four people died.

Portuguese authorities reported that almost all major wildfires were out by early yesterday. Some 2,700 firefighters were deployed to prevent re-ignitions in the country’s smoldering forests.

Investigations were underway to find the cause of the late-season wave of hundreds of forest fires, which Iberian officials blamed mostly on arsonists and freak weather conditions. Temperatures on the Iberian Peninsula exceeded 30 C over the weekend and the area was raked by high winds as Hurricane Ophelia churned past in the Atlantic.

“We are ready to extinguish fires, but we are not ready for arsonists,” Spanish Environment and Agriculture Minister Isabel Garcia Tejerina told public broadcaster TVE.

In Portugal, opposition parties rebuked the government for what they called a lack of preparedness.

The Civil Protection Agency’s full fire-fighting contingent operates only during the traditional peak wildfire season, which runs from July 1 to Sept. 30. In October, its fire-fighting assets are reduced by half.

Critics say the state of readiness must be more flexible, especially when Portugal is gripped by drought and its weather patterns are affected by climate change.

Prime Minister Antonio Costa called a special meeting of his Cabinet for next Saturday to discuss fire-fighting measures.

“This is not a time for resignations, this is a time for solutions,” Costa said on Tuesday.

But public outrage is simmering. Local governments in the worst-hit areas, aided by a social media campaign, are organizing silent street protests in Lisbon and in their own towns and cities to coincide with the Cabinet meeting.

In Galician towns on Monday, angry residents chanted “Never again!”  to protest the deadly  wildfires. Barry Hatton, Lisbon, MDT/AP