The village of San Vicente, in Vilamartín de Valdeorras (Ourense), is not the only one in which forest fires have taken houses ahead, but it is, because of the amount of burning homes, one of the most catastrophic results of this fire wave that has not yet ended in Galicia. His name, however, has not appeared in any of the parts of the Xunta. The reading of the official notes of those days does not suspect that the fire was consuming a good part of that and other peoples, which forced the neighbors to evict and that left devastation behind.
The worst of the fire in this area came from the afternoon of August 16. The neighbors were alone in many points defending their homes. The extinction device was overwhelmed and did not reach all threatened nuclei. That night, and despite the efforts of residents and volunteers, the fire consumed homes in Cernego, or deck and, above all, in San Vicente. At that time it was not yet known, but this fire, which began in Larouco, was going to become the largest since there are records in Galicia, with 30,000 hectares razed on August 22.
The note of the Ministry of Rural Affairs of the next day, with these smoking peoples, included a laconic reference to the situation in Valdeorras: “According to the latest estimates, (the fire started in Larouco) affects around 6,000 hectares, part of them in the municipalities of Petín, Quiroga and A Rúa.” Vilamartín de Valdeorras, where that same day the neighbors told how they had to flee from several nuclei, did not even appear among the affected municipalities.
The part continues with the media that have intervened: 16 technicians, 56 agents, 80 brigades, 66 motor pumps, eight blades, two technical support units, eight helicopters and six planes, in addition to the UME. It looks like a huge deployment, but it is not. The key is that, before listing all the troops, the Xunta includes the word “accumulated.” That is, they are all the means that had gone until then to the area since the flames began on the 13th. There have been no 80 brigades or 66 motobombs on that land at the same time nor is it possible to know how many have been every day or in which specific municipality.
This is a sample of the opacity in which the Xunta involves fire information. An opacity that starts with the very decision of the conditions that the Galician government puts to give data on a forest fire: it does not offer them unless it exceeds 20 hectares, threatens populations or affects a natural park. But neither does it always fulfill their own precepts. If you have to be guided by the data of the Ministry of Rural Affairs, only a natural park, that of Fragas do Eume, it has been burned: 4.88 hectares of wooded surface within the municipality of Monfero (A Coruña). The flames, however, entered at least one more. In Rubiá (Ourense) he has burned land of the Serra da Enciña da Lastra.
And, outside the natural parks, the fire has devoured spaces of high natural value in the Ourensano central massif or in Trevinca, the highest peak of Galicia -something above 2,000 meters -, without the Xunta mentioning it. In the last case, the communication policy caught criticism in networks. Since last weekend, the August 15 bridge circulated in social networks warning that the roof of Galicia was burning, but update after updating, was excluded from the official list. It did not appear until Tuesday, when there was already on the peaks was ash.
And the reference was not transparent: rural environment spoke first about a fire that had entered from Zamora and affected the municipality of A Veiga, without allusions to Pena Trevinca. The surface, about 20 hectares pending subsequent calculations. A look on the ground made that figure be multiplied. Then they changed both the way of placing the fire (the Galician government became referring to it as Carballeda de Valdeorras-Casaio) and the estimates, which are in 2,600 hectares in Galician territory. What did not change was mutism about the affected natural spaces.
The opacity also reaches the 2022 summer fire wave, which was, until this August, the one that had registered the largest fires. Three years ago the flames swept 7,000 hectares in Vilariño de Conso (Ourense), part of them within the Natural Park of O greenadeiro. Rural environment never facilitated how much of the calcined surface was in protected field, despite the various questions asked at this time by this newspaper.
“Without confinements or evacuations”, but with injured firefighters
The fires of this month of August have left several injured within the extinction device, but neither does the seriousness of the facts have caused information to flow from the Galician government. On August 12, three young workers of the municipal brigades were injured in Oimbra (Ourense). The Xunta only confirmed that they had injured, but neither how many or in what circumstances. The argument not to give more data was that, if the brigade was municipal, that corresponded to the City Council. These brigades depend on the agreements that the Xunta signs with local governments.
There were more injured forest firefighters in the middle of the fire wave. On the 18th, four suffered wounds. The information came through the Bulletin of 112 -along with the parts of rural areas, the means by which data on the population are given. The head of the update, in a new day of fear in many villages, did not foresee the news: “An afternoon No confinements or evacuations In Ourense. ”You have to read to the sixth paragraph to find the few data on the injured. It does not specify where it happened or what happened to three of them. It only says that there is a serious injured operator with burns and that three others were served in different health centers.
In the midst of the wave, less information
The same weekend that Trevinca was burning without the Xunta informing about it, another change in the communicative policy of Alfonso Rueda's team was produced: from August 15 the updates on the networks of 085 – the fire phone – were spaced and the parts of rural areas passed from three to only two, although this Saturday they sent again in the morning, at noon and at night. That day there were 13 burning fires without control and hundreds of people, according to the data of the Xunta, confined or evacuated. On that same day, 112 sent an alert to the mobiles of those who were in more than thirty municipalities in the province of Ourense and southern Lugo.
The Galician Government's communicative policy has led to the professional school of Xornalists of Galicia (CPXG) to send a letter to the Ministry of Rural Affairs, María José Gómez, to ask that her cabinet give information “broader, wider, frequent and systematized” on the fires. In an emergency, he argues, it is relevant that journalists and citizens have “complete and up -to -date data.” Specifically, he claims that the three daily informative parts recover and that there are more details about the fires: information about those that do not reach 20 hectares and a breakdown for days and municipalities of the media deployed, instead of that “accumulated” that is included in the notes.
The decision not to inform until the fires reach 20 hectares has caused an informative vacuum that has ended up quantifying the Minister itself. He said in an interview on the 18th in the being chain that only 492 fires had registered in the month of August. The Xunta had given only less than fifty data, so there were flames in almost 450 points that the Galician government said nothing.