The autonomous communities will have to prepare a valid fire prevention and extinction plan for their entire territory within three months, which must be ready and in operation before the start of 2023. The decree of urgent measures to combat the wave of fires, approved this Monday by the Government and published today by the BOE, also establishes a catalog of common prohibitions to apply when the risk of fire is very high or extreme.
The legal text recognizes that Spain is in "an emergency situation" due to the profusion of flames throughout almost the entire territory, "after a dry hydrological year and with ground temperatures above 40 degrees and even 60 on days and areas of highest heat."
The new measures will not be applied this summer, in which the danger of fires is constant,
in a year in which at least 200,000 hectares have already burned.
“We are in an emergency situation”, is underlined in the decree, whose force can only be verified in the next fire season.
The decree, which includes a plan to
dredge
the O Burgo estuary (A Coruña), establishes minimums so that there are no differences between the firefighting services between autonomous communities and aims to favor the coordination of all the administrations for a effective prevention and shutdown.
The text underlines that the wave of fires of 2022 indicates that "we are in an emergency situation, which seriously compromises the safety of people, infrastructure and the environment", which has not only led to a large number of devastating fires, but also also the loss of two human lives.
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The main thing about the decree is that it obliges the autonomous communities to have approved and published, before October 31 of each year, preventive plans "that will be applied uninterruptedly during the twelve months of the year in all the territories."
These plans must provide for "the stable and permanent assignment of specialized technical and professional means", that is, they must make it clear how many people and with what vehicles, equipment and infrastructure the regional firefighting bodies will be equipped.
The autonomies will have to adapt to the law before next January 31.
For its part, the State undertakes to keep active, throughout the year, the aerial means device, the airborne reinforcement units, and the other means of support, such as the Emergency Military Unit, whose 4,000 members are They have become a key element against fire and other catastrophes.
The Government has established "a minimum catalog of prohibitions", which will be applied when the State Meteorological Agency (Aemet) issues a red alert for very high or extreme risk of fires.
They are common sense measures, such as the prohibition of lighting fires in open spaces, of burning stubble or grass or in camping areas or highway rest areas, or the veto on the use of agricultural machinery that can produce a spark in a strip of 400 meters around mountains and rural areas.
The Civil Guard has reported in the last week of the arrest of two people and that it has four others under investigation as alleged perpetrators of fires in Palencia, Castellón, Jaraíz de la Vera (Cáceres), Monte Yerga (La Rioja) and Quintanilla de Coco (Burgos) due to negligence in the burning of stubble and the inappropriate and untimely use of agricultural machinery.
The one in Quintanilla de Coco, which has burned 900 hectares, has led to the arrest of a 47-year-old man for using a harvester "outside the permitted hours," according to the armed institute.
The reform of the Forest Law that the decree supposes consolidates a cooperative mechanism for the restoration of burned areas in which the provisions of the law were previously fulfilled.
Thus, if the area burned is more than 10,000 hectares (or 5,000 if 70% is tree mass) or even just 500 hectares as long as they belong to the Natura Network, the autonomous communities will participate financially in the restoration up to a maximum of 50% of the costs, except in the case of state-owned land.