At the gates of the elections and already outside the period of sessions, the Valencian Government has been forced to put out a fire that began to burn on March 23 in the mountains of the interior of Castellón and burned 4,723 hectares, but whose explanations had to be give yesterday in Les Corts already finished the period of sessions. The Minister of the Interior, Gabriela Bravo, defended the management at all times, arguing that if it were not for “the enormous amount of resources allocated, the coordination between Administrations and the expertise of the professionals who acted in its extinction, it would have had the potential to affect 50,000 hectares”. Bravo warned of the virulence of these fires that come before the summer in a situation of drought and increased temperatures.
Some explanations that did not convince the opposition, which regretted that the hiring of reinforcements -José Antonio Rovira (PP)-, the existence of abandoned land and the inadequate staff -Fernando Llopis (Ciudadanos)- or even the actions of aerial means with capacities much lower than the seaplanes that were used in the 90s -José MarÃa Llanos (Vox)-.
Minister Bravo, for her part, gave her defense a twist and warned that “climate change has meant that fires are no longer a risk typical of the summer season.” A line that generated complaints from the opposition that regretted that, with the climate change shield, the Executive did not assume responsibilities for its management in terms of prevention.
However, Bravo warned that governments are facing “a phenomenon that has become one of the greatest threats suffered by our mountains due to its high frequency and intensity and that it has become civil protection emergencies.” During his long explanation, he explained how the situation of the fire in Castellón and Teruel was “very complex; so much so that, on several occasions, some units were forced to take an escape route to guarantee the safety of their troops.” He also recounted how “we regretted the entrapment of 14 firefighters who, fortunately, suffered minor illnesses due to smoke and only one of whom required transfer to a health center.”
Bravo emphasized the three factors that made it difficult to extinguish the fire: weather conditions; an impregnable orography and agricultural abandonment caused by depopulation. Thus, he explained that in a century and a half there has not been a period “so long and intense of drought” as the one that already affects the southeast of Spain where it has not rained for eight months. In fact, he pointed out that the week of the fire there was a combination of high temperatures close to 30 degrees, added to the strong west wind, the low relative humidity recorded and the lack of rainfall. “All this multiplied the power and speed of the fire.”
A situation that does not seem conjunctural, nor is the abandonment and depopulation of the land. The head of the Interior stated that “every year, the forest area of ​​the Valencian Community grows by 3,300 hectares due to the abandonment of agricultural land as a result of depopulation.” And she linked it to the fire: “One of the singularities of this fire is that it has occurred in an area that 70 years ago was made up of terraced areas that have not been cultivated for decades.”
In this context of increasingly violent and seasonally adjusted fires, Bravo claimed “for the good of all”, to flee from the temptation of falling into the opportunistic politicization of a necessary debate. “Let’s flee, even when we are just over a month away from an election.” A difficult invitation to accept in the middle of the pre-campaign, or if the left had been in the opposition, it would not have taken advantage of the seriousness of the fire to charge against the Government?
