Forest fire management: what is the government’s preventive plan?
Forest fire management: what is the government’s preventive plan?
13 November 2017
published by http://www.24horas.cl
CHILE: President Michelle Bachelet arrived on Monday to the commune of Coltauco to make an inspection visit to the construction and maintenance of firebreaks that are carried out in the area within the framework of the Strategy for the Strengthening of Forest Fire Management 2017.
The latest heat wave has also increased the alerts and Conaf has announced that it keeps protocols activated in case of emergencies, in order not to repeat the events that occurred during the past summer.
1. Strengthen the fire fighting strategy
– Focus on preventing and mitigating forest fires, to minimize the risk that causes the occurrence of forest fires and reduce the vulnerability of ecosystems and communities against these threats.
– Preparation for the response: it has as objective to have territorial information, protocols, procedures, resources of detection, monitoring, combat, personnel equipped, trained and trained for the response. In addition, it contemplates improving coordination among the agencies involved.
2. Public-Private Cooperation
– Communication channels: This aspect emphasizes the consolidation of effective communication channels between the State and private entities, in order to materialize timely physical or financial contributions to fight forest fires.
– Prevention of infrastructure: It focuses on working with companies to generate self-care measures to prevent forest fires.
– Manage the emergency from the local and civil society: It seeks to strengthen links between municipalities, civil society and the private sector in order to prevent forest fires.
3. Criminal prosecution
– Interinstitutional coordination and sanctions: The penalties for fire crime range from 541 days to 20 years of deprivation of liberty .
For this, the necessary coordination instances will be generated between the OS-5 of Carabineros, the Environmental Crimes Brigade of the PDI and the Public Prosecutor’s Office.
– Forestry intelligence: This aspect includes a group of professionals who manage to face the problem of the fire knowing the why, who, how and where the fires are produced and in this way generate the necessary measures that allow to face those detonators and diminish the occurrence of fires.
INCREASE OF BRIGADES
For the current period, a total of 207 brigades are contemplated, 64 more than the 2016/2017 period (143 brigades), representing an increase of 44.7%. In total, there will be a total of 2,783 brigade members.
The BRIFE (Army Forestry Brigades) -which act on the second line- will have 52 brigades (988 troops), while the BRIFAR (Navy Forestry Brigades) will provide five brigades, with a total of 100 troops.
The air resources for this season contemplate the disposition of 4865 flight hours, 83.5% increase over the previous season .
In terms of prevention, the CONAF budget will be around two thousand 500 million pesos , that is, 120% more than in 2014 to generate preventive actions in three areas: reduce the occurrence, reduce damage, raise awareness and educate the population, working hard with the communities.
