The Minister council yesterday approved the declaration of catastrophic zones in fifteen communities that have been affected by 119 forest fires. Among them are the four Tenerife municipalities that were affected by the fire in the fire that was declared on July 21 -and which is still not officially extinguished- and that affected 2,700 hectares. These are Los Realejos, San Juan de la Rambla, La Guancha and Icod.
In mid-afternoon this Tuesday, official sources from the Los Realejos City Council – the municipality in which the fire was declared and in which the flames left the greatest damage – indicated that they were waiting for the publication in the Bulletin State Official (BOE) to, from there, establish the steps to follow. And it is that, depending on what the aforementioned text establishes, it is possible that the locality attends the aid jointly with the others, or that it does so alone.
As will be remembered, the fire began in the enclave of Los Campeches, on the peaks of Los Realejos, and became one of the fires that has caused the most damage in the Archipelago in the last decade.
The figures for all of Spain during this summer amount to 220,000 hectares according to the balance in mid-August, the Efe agency reported yesterday, and indicated that these are fires that in some cases have been large and have caused death. of three people. This was pointed out by the Government spokesperson, Isabel Rodríguez, who stressed that more than 27,500 people have been evacuated, for which the Executive intends, in addition, to complement those affected with aid.
Rodríguez, at a press conference, indicated that the Government has approved a series of mechanisms to speed up the management of aid, complementary to those of the Ministries of the Interior and Public Administrations.
The total number of communities
Thus, areas seriously affected by civil protection emergencies are declared in the communities of Andalusia, Aragon, the Balearic Islands, the Canary Islands, Castilla y León, Castilla-La Mancha, Catalonia, Valencia, Extremadura, Galicia, Madrid, Murcia, Navarra, the Basque Country and La Rioja. In all cases, these fires reached such a seriousness that the affected regions activated their protection plans in an operational situation of levels 1 or 2, as established by the General State Plan for Emergencies, according to the Ministry of the Interior.
serious environmental damage
The fires have also generated serious environmental damage and caused serious damage to infrastructure and public and private property, as well as to crops and farms, industrial estates and other production facilities, although, according to the Executive, at this time no have yet to be precisely quantified.
The planned recovery measures, whose execution corresponds to the Ministry of the Interior, contemplate direct aid for death or for absolute and permanent disability, for total destruction of the home or for damages that affect the structure of the habitual residence, among others.
Likewise, the agreement provides for the adoption of other aid measures such as declaring certain areas of special action, granting aid for damage to agricultural, livestock, forestry and marine aquaculture production, among others.
Once a detailed report on the damage caused by the fires is drawn up and a technical assessment of its amount is available, the Government, in collaboration with the regional and local administrations, may complete this royal decree with other measures complementary to those adopted by the territorial administrations to which the competence in matters of civil protection corresponds.
extinction continues
The decision has been adopted on a day in which air and land resources continue to work one more day on the fire in Bejís, Castellón, which this Monday, a week after it was declared, was considered stabilized and whose evolution continues to be positive with everything the controlled perimeter, without reproductions during the night.
Meanwhile, in Andalusia, work was being carried out shortly before 3:00 p.m. yesterday on a fire declared in a place in the Seville town of Guillena. The two fires registered on Monday in the municipalities of Ponteareas and Moaña, in Pontevedra, are stabilized after destroying more than 45 hectares.
For its part, the Castilla-La Mancha firefighting plan has declared the fire that broke out last Sunday in the Sierra de Malagón, Ciudad Real, extinguished on Tuesday.
“The political pimpampúm”
The general secretary of the UGT, Pepe Álvarez, yesterday called for coordination between the Government of Spain and the autonomous communities when dealing with the prevention and extinction of forest fires in order not to turn them into “the pimpampum of politics”.
Álvarez, who offered a press conference in Zamora before meeting with personnel from the Castilla y León firefighting operation, called for this coordination in the prevention of fires and natural disasters of this type that are “a consequence of climate change.”
“Policies must be coordinated, the autonomous communities have to facilitate and work together with the Government of Spain” so that the fires, instead of confronting politically, are an “element of cohesion” and allow “joining efforts to fight against the effects of climate change» and the new forest fires in Spain.
Along with the foregoing, Álvarez also requested the resignation of the Minister for the Environment, Housing and Territory Planning of the Junta de Castilla y León, Juan Carlos Suárez-Quiñones, considering that his responsibility is clear in the forest fires that have devastated the province of Zamora this summer.
