Arsonists May Be Behind Fatal Portugal Blaze, Firefighters’ Group Says

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/21/world/europe/portugal-fire.html

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MADRID — The head of Portugal’s firefighters’ association said on Wednesday that he believed arsonists had most likely started the fire that killed 64 people last weekend, contradicting a police assessment that attributed the cause to lightning.

The claim is certain to increase concerns about misinformation by the authorities during a fire tragedy that has traumatized the country.

It comes a day after Prime Minister António Costa ordered an investigation into possible flaws in the emergency response, including why motorists were allowed to drive into the fire that they had sought to escape. Most of the fire’s victims died on the road, stranded in their cars.

On Wednesday, Jaime Marta Soares, president of the Portuguese Firefighters League, told TSF, a Portuguese radio station, that he was convinced the fire was provoked by “a criminal hand.”

He suggested that lightning had struck about two hours after the fire had already begun. While he did not offer evidence to back his claim, he demanded a full investigation into the origins of the fire.

On Sunday, a day after the fire began and as firefighters scrambled to reach isolated hamlets in the burning forest, José Maria de Almeida Rodrigues, the national director of Portugal’s judicial police, said that the fire “very clearly” was a result of natural causes.

At the time, the police chief said that officials had identified the exact spot in the forest where lightning first struck, during a so-called dry thunderstorm, in which there is lightning but no rainfall.

On Wednesday afternoon, firefighters were still battling pockets of fire near the town of Góis, a short distance from the area around the town of Pedrógão Grande, where people perished.

The authorities said they were close to bringing the blaze fully under control, with the support of foreign firefighting planes.

The debate over the fire’s origins comes after Portugal completed on Tuesday three days of mourning for the tragedy. During the national mourning, politicians mostly heeded a call by President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa to first deal with the emergency before discussing its circumstances.

It is now likely, however, that the fire will turn into a political and institutional confrontation.

Environmentalists want the disaster to serve as a catalyst for Portuguese politicians to address longstanding problems relating to the mismanagement and neglect of forests.

The migration of rural people to cities and coastal areas as part of the country’s economic development has also left vast amounts of farmlands dangerously untended.

While visiting the disaster zone, Feliciano Barreiras Duarte, a national lawmaker from the main center-right opposition party, told The New York Times that the fire was “the result of mistakes by successive governments,” including flawed policies promoted in the past by his own party.

“What has happened here isn’t just a natural disaster, it’s also shameful,” he said.

While a few funerals have already been held since Tuesday, the authorities have yet to identify all 64 victims. On Wednesday, they raised the number of injured to 204, more than three times the number announced last weekend when the fire began.

The government also said it would create a special fund to finance the reconstruction of devastated villages and help support residents, in a thinly populated farming area that has also become increasingly reliant on tourists, drawn to its forest, gorges and river pools.