The municipality of El Rosario will be the first in Canary Islands to have an action plan against the risk of forest fires. This new document is part of the update of the Municipal Emergency Plan (PEMU) of El Rosario, which has been initiated by the Chair of Disaster Risk Reduction. Resilient Cities at the University of La Laguna (ULL), led by Geography PhD Pedro Dorta.
The Casa de la Cultura in El Rosario hosted a meeting yesterday morning chaired by the mayor of El Rosario, Escolástico Gil, to begin work on updating the current PEMU, drafted in 2016 and approved by the General Directorate of Security and Emergencies of the Government of the Canary Islands in 2018. The drafting team, led by Geography PhDs Jaime Díaz-Pacheco and Abel López, along with officials and technicians from the Councils of Social Action, Ecological Transition, Hydraulic Services, Urban Planning, and Local Police, participated in this meeting aimed at updating the PEMU, with a special focus on risk assessment for forest fires.
Mayor Escolástico Gil explains that “the PEMU must be a constantly evolving document so that it can adequately address the problems we are facing, resulting from climate change, as evidenced by the serious warning in the fire last August.” In this context, the mayor notes that “in El Rosario, we are working to prevent potential impacts in the event of disasters or emergencies; that is why we have recently approved an ordinance for the cleaning, fencing, and enclosure of lots and plots, with particular attention to the interface area.”
Geography PhD and member of the PEMU drafting team, Abel López, explains that the aim is to provide El Rosario with a municipal action plan against the risk of forest fires, as “in 2016, the top risk in the municipality was flooding, while now it is forest fires.”
El Rosario will become “the first municipality in the Canary Islands to have a document of this kind specifying critical infrastructures linked to water management, meeting points, evacuation routes, evacuation protocols for people, domestic and non-domestic animals…, in the event of a potential forest fire.” Something that is already being requested by the Territorial Plan for Civil Protection of the Autonomous Community of the Canary Islands (Plateca), as reported by a statement from the City Council.
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This paradigm shift is driven by the gradual transformation of the climate, with increasingly prolonged periods of high temperatures, scarcity of annual rainfall, and a significant water stress situation, particularly hazardous in mountainous areas.
