He remains convinced that “the procedures that were adopted were the correct ones”.
The President of the Regional Government has already responded – he wrote the responses – to the commission of inquiry into the August fires, a subject that was debated in parliament this Tuesday morning.
This afternoon, on the sidelines of the opening of an exhibition at Quinta Magnólia, Miguel Albuquerque stated that he had already written the answers to the questions sent to him by the commission of inquiry.
First he gave the impression that he had not yet responded, by declaring “I will respond to what was asked and it will go to the committee”, but then, when asked if he had already responded to the questions put to him, he stated “yes, everything is already written”.
He did not reveal the content of the responses but he guarantees that he will maintain his position of “looking at reality”. This is to reaffirm that “the procedures that were adopted were the correct ones” given the results of the major fire that raged for almost a week and a half, “because the situation that we verified and noted at the end of the fires was the one that the secretary was still saying today”, referring to Pedro Ramos’ statements in the Legislative Assembly of Madeira. “There was no serious damage to materials, there were no injuries, there were no deaths, no houses were destroyed, there was no destruction, almost, very little destruction of the natural heritage, so these are the procedures”, he reiterates.
Albuquerque asks for “some caution” when talking about fires and the actions of civil protection agents.
“I will repeat this again, but I don’t want to talk much more about fires, I’ve had 25 in my life”, he began by pointing out. “But now that the situation is calmer, that is, a civil protection leader has to be very careful about where he places the men and where he sends the men and women to fight the fire”. After making the introduction, he pointed out an example that he says occurred 24 years ago, in Serra d’Água. “The firefighters went to fight the fire in the bush. And what happened? The landslides, 2 men died. Therefore, we need to be very careful, because the fire cannot be fought, putting the men and women at risk. We have to be very careful in this aspect too”, he added.