Junta's head highlights effectiveness of Infoca in reducing 80% of wildfires this year to minor outbreaks

The president of the Junta de Andalucía, Juanma Moreno, highlighted earlier this week the high effectiveness of Plan Infoca, the region’s forest firefighting service, which reduced 80% of the wildfires that have broken out this year to small-scale outbreaks, therefore minimising the area affected by the flames in these incidents to less than one hectare per incident.

The head of Andalucía’s regional government took stock of the fires in the region this year after the high-risk season ended in late October, highlighting the “rapid and effective response” of this emergency response brigade despite adverse factors such as the extremely high temperatures recorded this summer, with two very prolonged heatwaves.

Moreno estimated the total area affected by the flames at 6,327 hectares, which is only 1% of the area burned nationwide, where many have lived through a tragic summer with devastating fires, especially in Castilla y León and Galicia.

Of the area burned in Andalucía, the majority, 4,669 hectares, were pasture and scrubland, while the remaining 1,658 hectares were woodland and forest. This is 2,618 less hectares than the average of the past decade, which was 8,945. It shows how effective the firefighting services are and that the impact of fires has been reduced.

Infoca brigades carried out 876 interventions on forest areas. Of these, 182 were wildfires while 694 were outbreaks.

Moreno gave this assessment after chairing the meeting of Infoca Plan’s regional advisory committee held at Madroñalejo’s forest defence centre (Cedefo) in Aznalcóllar (Seville), one of the 23 operational facilities in Andalucía that house the resources, personnel and equipment of this forest fire prevention and control plan.

Moreno announced this year that a plan would be implemented to extend seasonal worker contracts to 12 months. This was “a longstanding demand from our forest firefighters that had been agreed to with the unions over a period of three years but that we will complete in two years. We will make a significant financial investment that our professionals are entitled to,” he said. He also announced two new operational Infoca units: a heavy machine unit and technical fire unit.

He also noted that the campaign this year had to run for 16 extra days until the 31st October, due to late autumn rains and high temperatures. He stressed that Infoca is active all year round and also performs prevention and conservation in forest areas.