This Friday, the United States and Portugal signed a Memorandum of Understanding on Rural Fire Prevention and Control that will share resources in education, research, risk reduction and soil restoration.
The agreement will be signed at the US Embassy in Lisbon between the National Interagency Coordinating Center and the Agency for Integrated Rural Fire Management (AGIF).
The US Embassy in Lisbon considers the signing of this memorandum of understanding “an important milestone in the cooperation between the United States and Portugal in the fight against rural fires.”
“Following similar highly successful agreements between the United States and Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Mexico, this MoU will help prevent and combat the devastating wildfires that affect both the United States and Portugal every year. This agreement will enable faster sharing of resources to combat rural fires, ranging from joint firefighting training, research into fire prevention and risk reduction, and soil and water restoration after fires,” the embassy said in a statement.
According to the note, the United States is already helping AGIF develop a training strategy for rural fire-focused management and management operations, and in October 2022, US Forest Service experts spent two weeks in Serra da Estrela with staff from the Institute for Conservation of Nature and Forests (ICNF) rehabilitates over 303,000 square kilometers of fire-damaged land and restores drinking water sources for 2.5 million people in Portugal.
In accordance with this memorandum, other organizations of both countries involved in the fight against rural fires will be able to cooperate directly, sharing best practices and the most advanced technical and scientific knowledge.
For AGIF, this memorandum aims to strengthen cooperation between the two countries in the field of mutual assistance in fighting rural fires, information exchange, education and training, research and innovation, and the exchange of fire fighting resources.
AGIF also points out that through this MoU, Portuguese organizations can not only collect best practices in their fields of activity, but also transfer their best practices to North American organizations.
Author: Portuguese
Source: CM Jornal
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