Throughout the year, the Cabildo maintains work and practical exercises to reinforce prevention and the capacity for action of the different media, especially in mid-range areas and peaks.
La Gomera continues to develop different exercises and drills throughout the year aimed at reinforcing the island's preparation for possible forest fires. These actions are integrated into the set of prevention and extinction works that are carried out on a permanent basis, with special attention to the middle and peak areas, where the conditions of the terrain and vegetation can make intervention work difficult.
The president of the Cabildo, Casimiro Curbelo, pointed out that "with these actions we continue to advance in a strategy of prevention and permanent preparation, aimed at protecting the population, the territory and the natural heritage of the island against the risk of forest fires, which is increasingly greater."
In this sense, Curbelo insisted that drills constitute an essential tool to check the performance capacity of the different devices, reinforce mutual knowledge between teams and consolidate joint work mechanisms before facing a real situation.
For his part, the insular Minister of the Environment, Héctor Cabrera, highlighted that preparation for forest fires is not limited to the time of greatest risk. “Throughout the year, preventive actions, work on the territory, training and coordination exercises are maintained, the purpose of which is to reduce risks and improve the effectiveness of the response in the event of an emergency,” he added.
Within this framework, in recent weeks different forest fire drills have been carried out with the participation of media from different administrations and entities, within the continued work carried out to reinforce the island's preparation for this type of emergency.
In these exercises, resources from the Cabildo de La Gomera intervene in a coordinated manner, through its Environment Area, together with resources from other administrations and collaborating entities, including ground brigades, technical personnel, forestry agents, coordination and communications teams, and support means. The practices allow the distribution of functions, communication protocols and joint response capacity to be tested in the field, in addition to detecting possible aspects for improvement before facing a real situation.
These types of drills also allow professionals to familiarize themselves with the difficulties posed by a forest fire, both due to the evolution of the fire and the orography, access or the need to mobilize and coordinate different resources simultaneously.
