These are among the conclusions contained in the report ‘The complex of fires in Pedrógão Grande and surrounding municipalities, started on 17 June’, submitted on Monday by Coimbra University’s Centre of Studies on Forest Fires to the minister of internal administration.

Portugal's prime minister said on Monday night, in the wake of more deadly fires, that the cabinet would on Saturday meet to discuss ways of acting on the report's findings.

The report, drafted by Domingos Xavier Viegas, states that “the system of communications by radio and by telephone suffered a general failure in the whole region, both because of limitations inherent to the systems, such as its lack of protection against exposure to fire, and because of being overloaded by users, and also because of deficient use of some of the systems”. It addes that this situation was “aggravated by the lack of availability of complementary means [of communication] due to the lack of planning.”

This failure, the report went on, “is believed to have contributed to the lack of coordination of the fire-fighting and rescue services, to the difficulty in requesting help on the part of residents, and to the worsening of the consequences fo the fire.”

The report was commissioned by the government, amid pressure from the political opposition in the wake of the June fires.

According to the report, the failure of communications was not a decisive factors in the initial phase of the fire in Escalos Fundeiros, from its detection to around 6pm or 7pm on 17 June, at which time “control over the fire was lost”.

However, in the critical period between 7pm and 10pm “the lack of communications, between the Operational Command Post and the forces … on the ground, is believed to have been very important” both in failing to respond to calls for help and in coordinating resources.

“We cannot understand the lack of care of those in charge of communications since this was not the first recorded report of a collapse of communications,” the report notes. “Even at the level of mobile antennas, there being none operational cannot be acceptable.”

The report calls for “operators to be obliged to reinforce mobile communications in a very short space of time, with the aid of mobile antennas as happens in major sporting events and in other events that involve large numbers of people.”

The report also proposes that the emergency communications system, SIRESP, have more mobile antennas functioning, that it increases its bandwidth, and possibly “socialise users of the network to be able to use it more efficiently, so as to avoid unnecessary communications or [ones] that may be made on other networks.” It recommends that a communications plan should be drafted for each theatre of operations.

The fire in Pedrógão Grande started on 17 June and claimed, according to official figures, 64 deaths.

The report, however, raises that number to 65, counting a women who was run over as she was fleeing the fire.