Heat wave with fires and preventable deaths

The governments, bourgeois parties and businessmen prioritize profit over life. They support and reproduce the capitalist system that destroys the planet. You have to "turn the tables".

Santiago Quintela writes

Biggest fires in years

Year 2012 had been the worst in terms of amount of area devastated by fire in Spain. That year they burned more than 200.000 hectares. So far in the 2022, they already burned around 140.000, and august is not over yet, the hottest month. According to experts, this scenario will become commonplace. With global warming, heat waves are repeated and with them, spring gets shorter and summer gets longer, which extends the fire season. Added to this situation is the precariousness in which those responsible for putting out the fires work, with lack of equipment, low wages and poor working conditions.

climate change in action

The fires have not been caused solely by the hand of the human being, but the vast majority of them are attributed to sudden meteorological phenomena; from the lack of rain, even strong heat waves. Phenomena that are becoming more frequent, with permanence in time and in the territories. Climate change is a reality and generates perfect conditions so that with lightning, or a spark, thousands of hectares burn in a few days. In the Spanish State there is a environmental emergency widespread that the authorities refuse to recognize and that, among other serious facts, He also had a demonstration at the Ecocide of the Mar Menor. This, despite being a truth recognized by the scientific community and world leaders, does not have an impact on the reduction of CO2 emissions.. Production to obtain capitalist profits continues without qualitative changes that imply an energy reconversion to stop depending on fossil fuels. The speeches of the European Union do not go beyond that, words, with little real impact.

Structural problems and policy makers

In the Spanish State, Another important factor is the depopulation of the countryside and the abandonment of the rural environment, which has a lot to do with the agro-livestock capitalist production model. As we have already developed on other occasions, capitalism has destroyed small farmers and rural workers. They made the livestock activity an industrial activity, taking the cattle out of the mountains and concentrating them in industrial warehouses. However, for the environmental counselor of the Junta de Castilla y León, Juan Carlos Suarez Quinones (Popular party), the fault of the abandonment of the rural environment and the maintenance of the forests lies with the “new fashions of environmentalism” and not the capitalist productive model that his party defends. The government of "Progressive coalition" PSOE-United We Can does not have a bottom line solution for this problem. Neither do the PP and Vox, who are running as replacements and sustain a systematic offensive against workers., the immigrants, feminist and environmental movements.

They do not recognize forest firefighters

Despite this dire scenario, governments spare resources to combat natural disasters: resources are scarce and precariousness plagues the workers who give their lives to save the forests and towns besieged by the flames; for example, the firefighters of Castilla y León. Of the total workforce, only a third work all year, the rest work three months in the summer season and earn 1.000 euros. When the first big fire of the summer started, that wiped out 30.000 hectares in the sierra de la culebra, was only displayed 30% of the fire-fighting device. further, he 90% of the workforce works for State subcontractors, This means that there is a difference in materials and supplies depending on the employer.. No serious training, or decent working conditions, missing personnel and the one who enlists, short-term job.

heat waves that kill

The destruction is not only economic and environmental, between 1 and the 29 of July sustained temperatures above 40 degrees Celsius have killed 2.124 people, This implies the death of 72 people per day, among which the most affected are the oldest. If proper measures are not taken, the month of august will also be deadly. The highest data recorded was from the year 2015, when they died 1.726 people. There was also a record of territorial extension, since extreme temperatures reached 36 provinces.

They don't care about the workers

With the mixture of heat and precarious conditions, two workers have died, because of his work. The first was José Antonio González, from 60 years, employee under the responsibility of the Madrid City Council, in the district of Puente de Vallecas, who died as a result of heat stroke, working an inflexible schedule as a street sweeper. Then a worker from a ship in the town of Móstoles died, also in Madrid.

Right measures for the planet and people

The fire operation must be all year, not only scarce three months, when we already know that summers are getting longer. It is not about an “absurdity and waste”, As the PP environment adviser himself said in 2018. further, fire workers must be state workers, all with the same working conditions and stability. You need to support your claims: the professional category of forest firefighter and the creation of a new collective agreement that is adapted to the needs of the workers. Instead of giving the money away to the bankers and the big companies, they must pour social resources to avoid deaths from heat. Workers in all sectors must have sufficient wages that automatically adjust with inflation, working hours that are not affected by extreme heat, adequate equipment and decent working conditions.

It's not the weather, It is capitalism

The bourgeois parties are in charge of sustaining and reproducing the capitalist system. They do everything possible so that the workers are the ones who pay the consequences of the capitalist crisis and that the profits go to the big companies. They are the ones that legalize the exploitation of man by man and the environmental destruction. It is necessary to build a front of the extreme left, a new political tool against the capitalist system, that destroys the planet at the expense of enriching a few. We fight for the strategy of socialism to “turn the omelette”, because our life and our planet are worth more than your profits.