20.00: Third post of the day.

Translation of an article in today's Voz de Galicia.

Second article shortly.

Once again something has failed

They have belatedly appeared again, with their small recruitment banners to which every good person would subscribe –‘No More Fires’. Actors who are using their media influence to make a call to the citizenry to act in a civilised manner both during the fires and in their aftermath. What they and the promoters of these mini-demonstrations fail to show is a even a little criticism of the management of the crisis. For, up to now, the performance of the politicians has left no one completely satisfied. Occasionally late and frequently insufficient responses on the part of the rescue teams, closure of roads as important as the A9 without determining the alternative routes so often sought in the past, inadequate health advice on the dangers of smoke, and a thousand other things.

If, years ago, in the face of a catastrophe, we Galicians asked ourselves “In whose hands are we?”, the question is the same now. Yes, the fingerprints have changed. But, a week on, the problem of the fires has not been resolved with the speed claimed by those who once presented themselves as capable of dealing with such matters. Señor Jorquera calls members of the PP party ‘vultures’ and Señor Rego says of those who are seeking to make political capital that this is how PP party members used to refer to others. Even the opposition doesn’t improve. To me it’s ridiculous to see the President of the PP party using a hose on a real fire as if it were a back garden.

Neither prevention nor extinction of the flames. The two pillars of the struggle against fire have again failed. We may wish it will never happen again but I fear that – thanks to political ineffectiveness – reality will prove stubborn. The bases from which the pyromaniacs can do us so much damage are unscathed.