Oviedo (EFE).- The Asturian Government has today approved a shock plan in the face of the wave of forest fires that has burned some 32,000 hectares -12,000 of them of trees- that will allow one hundred percent subsidization of reforestation in the affected areas and that It will include direct aid to affected owners and municipalities.
The Executive, meeting this Friday in Tineo, one of the councils most affected by the fires, has given the green light to a plan that provides, among other measures, compensation of between 500 and 1,200 euros per hectare for the owners of affected forests.
Emergency aid
As reported by the President of the Principality, Adrián Barbón, at a press conference, the crash plan includes direct aid to individuals, town halls and owners of mountains affected by property damage or loss, the amount of which is pending evaluation of the damages and which They will be direct and will be processed urgently, by agreement of the Governing Council.
The support will be oriented to alleviate the effects caused in buildings, tool sheds, private agricultural warehouses and to compensate for damage to municipal infrastructure.
On the other hand, aid will be enabled to deal with forest losses suffered by forest owners.
The first calculations suggest that these compensations will oscillate between 500 and 1,200 euros per hectare, although it is not a closed amount, because the valuation depends on the type of species, the forest density or the age of the trees, among other parameters.
Reforest one hundred percent of the devastated areas
The Government of Asturias will also provide in the coming weeks aid for forest management and development, aimed at both individuals and local entities, which will allow the reforestation of all affected areas with a one hundred percent subsidy.
The line for individuals 2023 will be endowed with 4 million that can be expanded up to 5.5, and for local entities a call of 700,000 euros is planned, expandable in turn up to 850,000.
Additionally, there will be funding from the Ministry for the Ecological Transition and the Demographic Challenge that will allow all the precise reforestation needs to be completed.
On the other hand, the Principality has already made 2.4 million available to local councils and entities through aid for fire prevention.
In addition, it will activate in May the new prevention fund included in this year’s budgets, which totals 4.5 million and will double the resources provided to municipalities for this purpose.
This new fund, which includes a more agile management system than the current one, is multi-annual (2023-2025) and reaches an endowment of 13.5 million, co-financed by the European Agricultural Fund for Rural Development (EAFRD).
Barbón has ensured that the granting of aid will be “expedited as much as possible” and that “all the resources that are necessary” will be used to address the “reconstruction” of Asturias.
In this sense, he has indicated that some lines of subsidies will come out in April and that direct aid to private property is expected to be approved between May and June, once the owners identify the damage.
damage assessment
After the wave of fires, the regional government will request the declaration of Asturias as a seriously affected area, a civil protection emergency, the current denomination of a catastrophic area, for which an information collection procedure has been initiated on all affected assets that will be open Until April 30.
In parallel, the Executive has begun work to measure the devastated areas, which, according to initial estimates, amount to 32,000 hectares, 12,000 of which are wooded.
Administrative procedures have also begun in order to facilitate cutting permits in private forests, in such a way that the greatest possible amount of wood can be recovered.
Regulatory and organizational reforms
In addition, the Principality has announced that it will implement organizational, regulatory and planning reforms that will make it possible to deal in the future with possible situations as exceptional as the one experienced in recent weeks with the greatest security guarantees for the population.
In this way, changes will be included in the current regulation, which will affect both surveillance and fire prevention and extinction.
Thus, the reform of the Forestry Law will be addressed, which will be renamed the Forestry and Forest Fire Prevention Law, for which a technical committee will soon be set up from the Forestry Council.
In addition, a new fire prevention resolution will be drawn up immediately to give special attention to the land close to populations (the urban-forest interface), where there are more risks to lives, houses and property.
The Forestry Plan will also be adapted, the processing of which has been paralyzed to include the changes that are introduced in the Forestry Law and self-protection policies of the towns will be promoted for which the management of forest resources will be improved, the infrastructures of extinction, the training of neighbors and the coordination of civil protection devices.
The Minister of Rural Environment, Alejandro Calvo, has raised the possibility of using “native or leafy species with limited strips” to improve the self-defense of the towns and has said that they will reforest with the species that are habitually used in these processes.
Barbón sees it as “indecent” to doubt the intention of the fires
In his appearance before the media, Barbón has assured that Asturias has experienced “the greatest aggression” in forestry in its history and has been caused by “real criminals and criminals who attacked the interests” of the community with a lighter.
In this sense, he has said that it is “indecent” that there are those who “at this point doubt the intentionality” of “the vast majority, if not all”, of the fires in well-managed forests.
“The culprits are those who have a face and we are going to see it in the coming months when there are sentences,” stressed the head of the Executive about an investigation that “continues its course” after five complaints have been filed against alleged perpetrators and They investigate ten other people. EFE