12/04/2023
Dominican specialists visit Spain to learn about the functioning of emergency telecommunications systems and controlled burning plans.
Controlled burning protocols by the MITECO's Integral Forest Fire Prevention Teams.
Officials from the Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources of the Dominican Republic (MIMARENA) and the Emergency Operations Centre have visited Spain to learn about the Spanish experience of the Ministry of the Interior’s emergency telecommunications systems and the controlled burning plans and the Integrated Forest Fire Prevention Teams (EPRIF) of the Ministry for Ecological Transition and the Demographic Challenge (MITECO).
The visit, organised in the framework of the European programme Euroclima+, co-led by the FIIAPP, has allowed the exchange of knowledge and experiences between specialists from both countries in order to improve the capacities of the Department of Environmental Damage and Emergency Response to coordinate and develop programmes and actions for the prevention and mitigation of environmental emergencies, especially those related to forest fires.
The visit included training in the operation of the AML system, which allows Civil Protection to accurately geolocate calls made from a mobile phone, and ESAlert, which allows Civil Protection to send generalised and immediate alert messages to mobile phones located in an area affected by an emergency or catastrophe, as well as visits to the National School of Civil Protection as a public reference centre for Civil Protection training and to the Emergency Centre 112 of the Community of Madrid.
Subsequently, another group of personnel from the Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources of the Dominican Republic (MIMARENA) visited Spain to learn about the functioning of the forest fire prevention and extinction system for which MITECO is responsible in support of the autonomous communities of Spain, and specifically: the protocols for controlled burns.
In the course of this visit, they have known the functioning of the Area of Defence against Forest Fires (ADCIF) and have made stays with two of the twenty-eight Teams of Integral Prevention of Forest Fires (EPRIF) and the recently created Teams of Prevention and Analysis of Forest Fires (EPAIF) that MITECO has distributed in the national territory.
“Fire prevention and extinction tasks are a key element in the fight against climate change, not only to prevent and reduce the loss of biological richness caused by fires, but also to prevent and reduce the large amount of greenhouse gas emissions they produce”, explains Elsa Velasco, coordinator of the Euroclima+ programme at FIIAPP.
They also visited the provinces of Cantabria (EPRIF of the Pas region) and León (EPRIF of Tabuyo del Monte), where they learned how these teams organise, define, plan and execute controlled burns, in coordination with the Autonomous Community, as another forest fire prevention tool.
