As climate change increases fires’ frequency and magnitude, risks grow due to local authorities’ incompetence
~ Mateo Sgambati
The Servizo de Prevención e Defensa contra Incendios Forestais (Forest Fire Prevention and Defense Service, SPIF) in the autonomous community of Galicia has raised the alarm about the chaotic situation it is facing, where more than half of the firefighting crews lack a leader. The precarious working conditions, combined with the failure to fill vacancies, have resulted in brigades operating with only one or two forest firefighters.
Working through the Confederación Nacional del Trabajo (National Confederation of Labour, CNT), the firefighters’ union has pointed out that the same is happening with the fire trucks that have been provided: the service spends too many resources on purchasing these trucks without having anyone to operate them. This situation forces long travel between districts to attend to various fires. When multiple fires occur simultaneously, the service is hanging by a thread, compromising the effectiveness and safety of the operators.
The CNT has repeatedly emphasised that it is working class people who suffers and face all the challenges. Galicia is not the only region that has denounced the precarious working conditions in the firefighting corps. In the neighbouring region of Castilla y León, the shortage of resources and waves of layoffs have been denounced repeatedly in recent years, with the absurd excuse from authorities that there is redundancy in firefighting operations.
All this is happening in a context where the budget for the Unidad Militar de Emergencias (Military Emergency Unit, UME) grows disproportionately, while firefighting brigades remain in precarious conditions. They forget that fires are extinguished by firefighters, not soldiers. Unlike soldiers, firefighters are not trained for war, but are equipped for peace. Since the revolutionary and counter-revolutionary processes born from the July 1936 revolution, firefighting corps throughout Spain have helped everyone without asking for a membership card, responding to calls for help under bombs more than a thousand times, working with whatever was available.
The negligence of regional and provincial institutions, and the corrupt political practices, not only deplete natural and forest resources by failing to provide sufficient resources to fight fires—something that can be considered environmental terrorism by inaction and the usurpation of communal sovereignty by disregarding activities that communities have historically managed—but have also led to the deaths of firefighters in the region.
Photo: Forest fire in Ponte Sampaio, Galicia, 2016. Wikimedia CC BY-SA 2.0
