Alison Roberts

speaker

141 appearances 10 recordings 3 series first heard Jan 2026 last heard 7 Jul

Alison Roberts’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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recordings per month · last 12 months

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 10 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 4.

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The Claire Byrne Show · Infernos devastate forests as Europe's temperatures rise · 7 Jul 2026 podcast

Well, looking back, we've had a similar situation to there in France.

You know, a series of heat waves, very unusual.

And the current one, the third in a row, is lasting 10 days.

You know, it's a bit unpredictable exactly when it will end, but it's well over a week.

And so today we have a situation where really the whole of the interior of mainland Portugal, just a bit along the coast, is not affected by this so badly, with hundreds of municipalities under maximum or very high risk of fire.

Now, Portugal is actually one of the more heavily forested countries in Europe, and

Because ownership tends to be very fragmented and there is always a problem with people managing undergrowth and brush.

There have been various deadlines set and people have asked them to be put back.

And in some cases, the owners of plots haven't even been able to identify.

So that's a long running problem.

And meanwhile, we have these very high temperatures today, 40 degrees or over in the interior and likely to continue for several days.

And that, of course,

is, you know, making the whole thing a powder keg in the words of the Portuguese minister overseeing the firefighting effort.

And that we have had actually one village that was evacuated, a very large fire that started last Thursday and only really brought it under control yesterday.

And several people were injured in that.

Also, the government has just announced just in the last hour or so that it's extending the state of alert that it actually is.

instituted last Thursday through to the end of the day on Thursday, so midnight on Thursday.

And that automatically triggers a range of policies, such as, for example, a ban on public access to designated forestry areas, a ban on the use of any machinery in forests, unless, of course, it has to do with firefighting, and a ban on the use of heavy machinery in any rural area.

So that's in an effort to stop sparks accidentally alighting

new fires, but we do have, you know, we have a series of these fires, which may be quite small, but can easily get out of control just in the Algarve, which of course is a very popular holiday destination.

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