Cash to help the fire fight
Emphasis placed on prevention and reducing the impact of blazes
A total of €1.5 million is being awarded to 254 town halls
A TOTAL of €1.5 million is being awarded to 254 municipalities in the Valencia region to help town halls draw up their own tailored plans to fight forest fires.
A spokesman for the regional department for the environment said they will cover 80% of the cost of making new plans or updating old ones.
He said municipalities with woods and forests are obliged by law to ‘have a document which outlines the action that should be taken in the event of a fire’.
Town halls chiefs ‘should understand the resources that they have to fight forest fires, and what the priorities are’.
“It is also important to plan for risks which face certain areas of a municipality, such as an urbanisation which is next to or in a forested area,” explained the spokesman.
The plans are designed to minimise the numbers of blazes which occur in the countryside and the damage that they cause.
To help town halls, the regional government has set out guidelines to be followed when drawing up the documents.
This also means that the plans are homogenous in the region and all municipalities are basing their response on the same recommendations.
The spokesman noted that the greatest emphasis is being placed on prevention and ensuring that if fires do break out then the impact should be reduced as much as possible.
At the same time, the department for the environment has introduced the initiative of ‘reduced’ PLRIF plans, which are designed for municipalities that have smaller amounts of forest.
These will be simplified and place less demands on the emergency services.
Plans presented this year will be valid until the year 2020, he added.