So far this year, the flames have burned almost 5 hectares of land in the Region of Murcia
This year, the Community has expanded the forest fire monitoring device by extending the work carried out by the Civil Protection helicopter until October, instead of ending in September as usual. In addition to aerial surveillance, there are fixed surveillance posts in the main natural spaces and patrols with pairs of Civil Protection volunteers in mobile surveillance.
The Minister of Water, Agriculture, Livestock, Fisheries, Environment and Emergencies, Antonio Luengo, presented this Wednesday the operation of the Emergency Civil Protection Plan for the prevention and extinction of Forest Fires in the Region of Murcia (Infomur Plan) for its high danger season, which begins this Wednesday and ends on September 30.
For the counselor, the expansion of the surveillance device “is a very important improvement, since it increases our ability to detect fires as soon as they occur, which facilitates their rapid extinction.” In addition, he then pointed out that it also “exerts a deterrent role” for those who intend to threaten the integrity of forest spaces, “without forgetting its necessary coordination task when there is a fire in which several aerial means intervene.”
For surveillance, the Infomur Plan has 20 fixed posts strategically distributed throughout the main natural areas of the Region, 34 pairs of Civil Protection volunteers from 32 municipalities on mobile surveillance, and a surveillance and coordination helicopter capable of transmitting images in real time to the Coordination Center.
For the extinction there are 19 forestry brigades, 4 rapid intervention brigades, 11 municipal emergency brigades, firefighters from the Consortium of Firefighting and Rescue of the Region of Murcia and the municipal firefighting services of the town councils of Murcia. Murcia and Cartagena, 3 helicopters with their respective heli-transported forestry brigades and a State Administration bomber helicopter.
In coordination tasks of these devices there will be firefighting technicians, environmental agents, base area coordinators, operations managers and information managers.
21 fires so far this year
So far this year, from January 1 to May 22, 21 forest fires have been declared in the Region of Murcia that have burned 4.91 hectares of forest land, 19 of them were near misses and only 2 exceeded one hectare of land. Both occurred in the month of January in the municipalities of Archena and Ceutí. In the year 2021, there were 83 forest fires, which affected a total of 69.4 hectares of land.
The Vega Alta-Ricote-Murcia area, at very high risk due to forest fires this Wednesday
The level of risk due to forest fires forecast for this Wednesday, June 1, in the Region of Murcia by the State Meteorological Agency (Aemet) is very high in Vega Alta-Ricote-Murcia and high in the Altiplano, Cuenca de Mula, Northwest. This level of alert is moderate in the Guadalentín region, while this risk is low along the entire coastline.
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