Proteção Civil Activates Nível Bravo on Friday 15 May With 15,149 Operatives, 3,463 Vehicles and 81 Aircraft on Standby — Two Air Force Black Hawks Join Rural-Fire Combat for the First Time

The Autoridade Nacional de Emergência e Proteção Civil moves Portugal's rural-fire dispositivo to Nível Bravo on Friday 15 May, locking in the first major escalation of the 2026 fire-season posture. Under the activated level, the Dispositivo Especial de Combate a Incêndios Rurais runs with 15,149 operatives across 2,596 teams, 3,463 ground vehicles, and 81 aircraft on standby — including, for the first time in service of rural fire combat, two Black Hawk helicopters dispatched by the Força Aérea Portuguesa. The aircraft total includes three AFOCELCA assets from the forestry-industry consortium, a marginal but operationally relevant uplift on the 2025 envelope.

Nível Bravo runs through 31 May, when the dispositivo automatically scales again to mobilise additional medium- and heavy-tonnage tankers and to fold in the seasonal sapadores florestais on extended-day rosters. The most intensive phase between July and September layers in further capacity in line with the historic late-summer fire peak. ANEPC president André Fernandes, presenting the calendar to a press briefing alongside Minister of Internal Administration Maria Lúcia Amaral, said the 2026 dispositivo had been designed specifically against the structural risk left by the Kristin storm that hit the Centro region in late January.

Kristin felled millions of trees across the inland Pinhal Interior, the Algarve and the Norte regions, leaving forest floors with biomass loads several multiples above the prior baseline. A fire-behaviour specialist at the Instituto Superior de Agronomia warned in late February that "it is impossible to clean everything" before the fire season, and a Público investigation on Monday 12 May reported that researchers expect a 2026 season "without precedent" if the predicted El Niño-amplified heat patterns hold through July. The Pinhal Interior, the Algarve and the Norte have all been classified as "very significant" risk by the ANEPC's geographical-risk mapping unit, with additional concern flagged for Leiria where Kristin's tree-fall density is highest.

Fire retardant chemicals and a higher count of aerial assets are the two principal innovations of the 2026 plan. The retardantes — chemical agents that delay or suppress combustion — are being pre-positioned at the regional comando operacionais in Coimbra, Faro and Vila Real to allow rapid first-strike deployment within the first golden hour of any ignição classified as risco crítico. The Black Hawk integration, in turn, formalises a doctrinal change agreed in late 2025: the Força Aérea's medium-lift rotary fleet, traditionally reserved for medical evacuation and search-and-rescue, is now part of the standing rural-fire reserve.

Cross-border cooperation forms the third pillar. On Tuesday 13 May the Comissão de Coordenação e Desenvolvimento Regional do Alentejo announced a €4 million Portugal-Spain rural-fire cooperation project, financed under the Interreg POCTEP cross-border programme, which formalises joint command-post protocols and asset-sharing arrangements with the Junta de Extremadura and the Junta de Andalucía. The project responds to the lessons of the 2022 and 2023 mega-fires that crossed the Portuguese border into Spanish territory and overwhelmed unilateral response chains.

The 2026 dispositivo is operationally larger than 2025's by roughly 200 personnel and 30 vehicles, with the most material delta concentrated in air assets and chemical-retardant stockpiles. The Civil Protection authority will issue daily risk bulletins from Friday onwards under the Nível Bravo activation, with the first elevated-risk concelhos expected in the southern interior and along the Pinhal Interior axis.