“Better prevent”: Carneiro advocates measures adapted to each region

O pS Secretary-General today argued that “it is better to prevent than to remedy” in response to bad weather, arguing that in future the adoption of measures by region and risk, such as pandemic or fires, should be assessed.

“ It is always difficult to make that judgment because I do not have the information available to the government and none of us have that information. There's an asymmetry in the information we all have. Now, what I say is that it is better to prevent than to remedy”, said José Luís Carneiro, on the margins of CNN Portugal International Summit, in Estoril, Cascais, Lisbon district, when asked if the government has gone too far in prevention measures in relation to the bad weather on Wednesday.

For the leader of the PS, this attitude of the PSD/CDS-PP government was better than the response to storm Kristin because “at the time it was late, at bad times, and there was nothing to do,” with all the “evil caused to the populations and institutions”.

“ What I say is that, under equivalent circumstances, it will be worth assessing whether it is possible to adopt measures for each region according to the level of risk. This is how it happened during the pandemic, this is how it happened in past fires”, he said.

Carneiro, who was already Minister of Internal Affairs, explained that the alert situation “is applied with different levels of limitations to fundamental freedoms due to the risks expected for each region”.

“ But it is better to prevent than remedy and it was important that nothing special had happened ", reiterated.

The depression Charles, which motivated the activation of the alert situation throughout the continental territory of Portugal from 00:00 to 23:59 Wednesday, lost power during the morning and divided into two cores of low pressure, towards Lisbon and another to the Algarve, the only region to maintain, in the middle of the afternoon, red weather warnings due to rain and wind, however disabled.

The National Emergency and Civil Protection Authority recorded more than 1,600 occurrences related to bad weather on the continent, especially floods, falls of trees and collapses, while in Madeira, the first region to suffer the effects of the storm, there were more than 300.

Close to two dozen people had to be relocated due to damage to their homes, but there is no record of victims.

In addition to closing schools and non-essential public services, bad weather motivated the cancellation of a few hundred flights and the cutting of roads.