The delegate of the Government in La Rioja, Beatriz Arraiz Nalda, and the president of the Rioja Government, Gonzalo Capellán, visited this morning the device planned in the autonomous community to combat forest fires, in which the media of the Ministry for Ecological Transition and the Demographic Challenge (MITECO) collaborate.
As the delegate has specified, Law 43/2003 on Forestry and its subsequent amendments attributes to the General Administration of the State the deployment of State means of support to the autonomous communities, for the coverage of the mountains against fires. It is important to point out that MITECO deploys a series of means throughout Spain to ensure this function of support to the autonomous communities in work of extinction and prevention.
“These means,” he said, “are of national coverage, that is, they are not assigned to the place where they are located, but they can act in any point of the territory where they are necessary.”
In the specific case of La Rioja, the Ministry’s airborne forest fire base is located next to the Logroño–Agoncillo airport and consists of two ground cargo aircraft and a mobile analysis and planning unit for air fire fighting, which from June 25 until the end of September will be operational in the community.
For Arraiz Nalda, “it is a pride for La Rioja to have magnificent professionals, who demonstrate their great work on the ground summer after summer”.
He also added that the Government of Spain does not only make available to La Rioja these aircraft of MITECO and this staff.
In this way, it has highlighted the BRIF, the Forest Fire Reinforcement Brigades, which are composed of highly specialized firefighting personnel and which provide a support service to the autonomous communities, being able to act anywhere in the national territory.
In addition, the delegate wanted to add value to “the Military Emergency Unit, which depends on the Ministry of Defense and, like the BRIF of Lubia and Daroca, they have collaborated in our autonomous community in large fires that we have suffered in the previous summer”.
Together with these key personnel in the reinforcement of the summer operation against fires, the State device is completed year after year with the actions of the State Security Forces (Civil Guard and National Police Force) in surveillance, prevention and investigation tasks, as well as with the AEMET, with its weather forecasts and the establishment of fire risk, or the General Directorate of Traffic, which makes available its variable information panels to place messages on fire risk, among other actions, such as radio information.
Therefore, the delegate of the Government in La Rioja has insisted that “the National Executive collaborates in the action that corresponds to the autonomous communities in the extinguishment of fires, providing means of state ownership whenever necessary”.