Robles asks the communities "not to haggle" in fire prevention: "An investment effort is missed"

MADRID, 25 Jul. (EUROPA PRESS) -

The Defense Minister, Margarita Robles, has urged the autonomous communities, especially those in which the largest fires have occurred this year, "not to haggle over material or personal means" for fire prevention "because misses an important investment effort".

Thus, the minister recalled during a visit to the facilities of the Combined Air Operations Center (CAOC) at the Torrejón de Ardoz air base that prevention work corresponds to these communities and that both the UME (Military Emergency Unit) and the 43rd Group of the Armed Forces arrive "when the fires have already started".

"Consequences must be drawn from this in a situation of very evident and harsh climate change and the competent administrations must make an effort to prevent fires, without haggling over any means to prevent the fire from spreading at that speed," said Robles, who has highlighted the importance of high temperatures in "a very harsh summer with two unprecedented heat waves since 2017".

The minister explained that so far there have been more than 1,000 soldiers displaced to sites with fires, where they have worked "in difficult weather conditions." Robles has pointed out some highly affected areas and still with active fires such as Tenerife or Castilla y León (with Zamora as the "hardest hit" province).

"The UME arrives at the sites when it is activated, it cannot arrive when it wants and how it wants. That is why I would call on the autonomous communities to not talk so much about the fire when it occurs, but to focus on that prevention work, because an important investment effort is missing", he lamented.

Precisely, with regard to the UME and the 43rd Group, he has pointed out that "there is no haggling" over material and personal resources and he recalls that "when talking about increasing the defense budget, these units are also included." He has also asked to "draw consequences" from the fires that occur in "a very evident and harsh climate change situation."

"I make a very special appeal to all the autonomous communities that are competent and, above all, to those in which the largest fires have occurred this year so that they do not haggle: we are talking about lives, people who lose all their properties and All this supposes enormous suffering", the minister reiterated, after showing "all the pain" for these losses and congratulating the work of the emergency teams.

The minister was received by Lieutenant General Fernando de la Cruz Caravaca, chief commander of the CAOC TJ, whom she congratulated on the day of Santiago, patron saint of Spain.

The general subsequently made a presentation of the Unit in the operations room, where he explained to the minister the activities carried out from this Center within the framework of its two main tasks, which are to monitor the airspace of southern Europe and contribute to the constitution of a Joint Air Command Center for the management of crisis situations, if necessary.