Villarejo del Valle (Ávila), Jul (EFE).- The Government delegate in Castilla y León, Virginia Barcones, has asked society for “great caution” in the face of this new heat wave, to avoid forest fires, although she has indicated that the state media are “ready” in case they have to intervene.
Barcones made this appeal during his visit to the facilities of the Forest Fire Reinforcement Brigade (BRIF) located in Puerto del Pico (Ávila), on the occasion of the forest fire campaign.
Caution
From this point in the south of the Community, the delegate has asked citizens for “a lot of caution”, especially considering that Castilla y León, like a good part of Spain, is immersed in a heat wave.
After insisting on the need to act “very carefully” so that the situation “continues as it has been up to now”, he has asked to “knock on wood” so that forest fires do not occur like the ones that devastated 300,000 hectares in Spain last year. , 50,000 of which corresponded to the province of Zamora.
Likewise, he stressed that the central government allocated 46 percent of the firefighting budget to Castilla y León in 2022 and 50 percent of the total flight hours.
strategic enclave
Regarding the Avila base of the BRIF, a strategic enclave between four autonomous communities (Castilla y León, Castilla-La Mancha, Extremadura and Madrid), he has indicated that it currently has 32 troops, which will double when it goes to category A , which will also mean going from one to two aerial means.
Regarding the new facilities, he referred to the statements made in September of last year, when he announced an investment of 6 million euros for the new base, located 5 kilometers north of the current one.
“Everything is in accordance with what I said and what we proposed at that time”, Barcones has limited himself to saying, who has set the start of works in September of this year that will last 22 months, including a new heliport, the main building, a warehouse and workshop, a covered outdoor dining room, a covered parking area, the projects for the different connections and the associated auxiliary constructions.
In this context, Barcones has praised the work of the professionals of this BRIF, who last year participated in 37 fires, accumulating a total of 179 flight hours and carrying out 1,488 water discharges, in support of the communities’ means of extinction. .
ground support
To this work must be added the hours of training both on the ground with the brigade members, and in the air with air support.
Climate change “is already here, it is unquestionable and it is lethal”, and in terms of fires “it causes increasingly virulent and voracious fires”, he reflected.
As an example, he has referred to the more than 300,000 hectares that burned last year in Spain, equivalent to the entire area devastated by fire between 2018 and 2021.
Zamora in memory
Thus, he recalled that the largest fire of all those that have been recorded in Spain took place last year in Zamora, where 50,000 hectares were burned in the Sierra de la Culebra and its surroundings, and four people died for whom it has had a memory.
In this context, he has pointed out that one of the four who died in 2022 in the Zamora fires was a brigade member.
Likewise, it has indicated that according to Civil Protection data, in 27 fires there were at least 92 people who needed the attention of the health services for more or less serious conditions and that 48 of this total belonged to the fire extinguishing devices.
In this regard, three of those attended took place in the province of Ávila, two brigade members due to smoke and minor burns in the Collado del Mirón fire, and a BRIF member from Puerto del Pico in the Santa Cruz del Valle fire. EFE