After the “Portugal Chama” campaign, which ran between 2019 and 2023, the Agency for the Integrated Management of Rural Fires (AGIF) is now launching a new campaign, which will last until 2026, and maintains the “Portugal Chama” brand but intends to highlight that “prevention begins” with each Portuguese person.

“Between 2019 and 2023 we avoided something like 60,000 fires because it is the combined difference of all the fires that we estimate would have happened if there had not been campaigns, deterrence and surveillance”, the president of AGIF told Lusa.

According to Tiago Oliveira, an average of 20,000 fires broke out in Portugal per year before 2019 and last year there were 7,000, meaning that the number of fires was reduced by more than half due to the strategy.

The person responsible stated that the first “Portugal Chama” campaign managed to “change many of the Portuguese’s behaviours”.

“But there are still 7,000 fires per year, of which the majority are intentional”, he stressed.

The president of AGIF specified that arson is currently the main cause of fires in the summer.