The Rural Agents have made a provisional positive balance of the fire prevention campaign during the harvest. The head of the body of the Lleida region, Llorens Ricou, has said that this year is a “quite different” situation because the last rains have “reversed” the fields and the drought has caused a drop in cereal production and, therefore, therefore little straw.
Until now it has not been necessary to activate any Alpha 3 plan, when around the same time last year there had already been 32 fires and some 200 burned hectares. The Rural Agents have carried out more than 230 inspections of harvesting machines and most of the farmers comply with the security measures to prevent fires. Something that from the body have stood out for the high awareness of the sector.
One of the novelties of this year is that the joint coordination room has been launched, located in Torreferrussa, in Santa Perpètua de Mogoda, in the Vallès Occidental. In addition, a new incident dissemination group has been incorporated into the device aimed at members of the Taula del Cereal.
As far as tools are concerned, new ones have been included, such as blowers, which make it possible to work from the first intervention to contain the fire. A feature that shows that this year’s campaign is totally different from previous ones, given the number of fires and hectares burnt on these dates in other years.
Until now, the Alpha 3 plan has not been activated once and in one of the areas where the device has been presented. In Montmaneu, in Alta Segarra, there was only the Alpha 1 plan and in Segrià and les Garrigues the Alpha 2 plan is active.
Ricou has stressed that the preventive work of recent years has been very important with the information that has been provided to agriculture and the awareness of the drivers, who are the first interested in not burning their machines.
The device is made in collaboration with the Directorate General of Agriculture, the Special Forest Fire Prevention Group (GEPIF) and forest protection groups (ADF). It starts on June 1 and ends on August 31, in which extinguishing media are mandatory. Operationally it affects nine counties which are: Segrià, Noguera, Pla d’Urgell, Urgell, Segarra, Solsonès, Bages, Anoia and Conca del Barberà.
