Protocol for 2020-21 fire season published in Guatemala

“Establish actions to prevent, mitigate and respond to events that generate risk, emergency or disaster situations -RED- due to the 2020-2021 forest fire season”, is the objective for which the National Council for Disaster Reduction ( CONRED), from Guatemala, published the National Protocol for the 2020-21 Fire Season.

Among the general objectives of this protocol is to “establish response mechanisms for forest fires from their detection, control and liquidation by implementing the Incident Command System in order to optimize resources”, as well as “coordinate with the institutions of the system present in the Departments and Municipalities, the necessary support for the control of forest fires and interface fires (Forestal -Urbano)”.

The 2019-20 forest fire season in Guatemala accounted for more than 1,200 fires in the national territory, in which more than 2,700 hectares of forest were destroyed. It was the department of Petén, to the north, and Quiché, in the west of the country, where the most accidents were registered, with more than 120 in each place.

That is why CONRED seeks to support itself in the training of personnel dedicated to forest fire coverage. According to the protocol, in the last two decades (2000-20), “the historical average of forest fires is 716 with an affected area of 30,793 hectares”.

According to experts, in Guatemala more than 90% of large-scale forest fires are caused by human hands, whose objective is the illegal appropriation of land territories, activities related to drug trafficking and the expansion of the agricultural frontier.