“No media outlet nor any government is going to issue a sentence.” This is all that the president of the Xunta, Alfonso Rueda (PP), intends to explain about the failures that last August caused the Oímbra fire, the second most destructive in Galicia since records began. To avoid assigning responsibility within the regional administration, Rueda argued this Monday that the judicial investigation that uncovered these errors is ongoing, although he also does not clarify whether he will take measures to prevent them from happening again this summer. The fire, which devastated more than 23 hectares across seven municipalities in Ourense, was caused by clearing work commissioned by the Xunta and the Oímbra City Council that was not stopped despite the risks involved because the order was lost along the way.
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“It is a matter that is judicialized and, therefore, during the ongoing judicial investigation I will say no more,” Rueda added regarding the lack of coordination, internal communication failures, the confusing chain of command, and contradictory orders revealed by the judicial inquiries and reported by this newspaper. The Galician president did emphasize, in his defense, that those days “there was an instruction from the Xunta prohibiting clearing work” due to dangerous weather conditions, but he did not want to clarify how it might not have reached the Oímbra workers. The case file also includes an email sent by the Xunta’s forestry services company (Seaga) just hours before the fire started, giving the company executing the clearing a list of areas to work on. The message with the subject “new routes to execute” does not specify dates. The worker performing the tasks, accused of a presumed crime of fire by gross negligence and three crimes of injury and damage by gross negligence, claims he interpreted that email as a sign that the cleaning work was continuing.
Rueda also did not want to comment on the actions of the mayor of Oímbra during a fire that caused serious injuries to three municipal firefighters. On August 12, the day the fire started, these young men aged 18, 23, and 26 were off duty. The Popular Party’s Ana Villarino, who according to witnesses who testified before the judge also did not stop the clearing work, verbally authorized them to join the firefighting efforts and told them which area to go to. Along the way, they were trapped by the flames. One of them was hospitalized for almost three months with more than half of his body burned. “We will wait for the results of the judicial investigation before making any assessment about any person,” Rueda stated regarding the mayor from his party.
The BNG demands Rueda’s appearance before the Galician Parliament to explain “the negligence and lack of coordination” that ended up causing “the second largest fire in our history, three injured firefighters, and an environmental and social catastrophe.” The nationalist leader, Ana Pontón, emphasizes that “Galician society deserves an explanation” about “how it is possible that the Xunta did not stop work that it itself commissioned.” Pontón calls it “political negligence” and “recklessness.”
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The Bloc calls on Rueda to take advantage of that appearance in the Galician Parliament to explain whether he will fulfill his promise to complete this same month the cleaning of safety strips in municipalities with fewer than 10,000 inhabitants or “if it is just another announcement or lie.” The deadline to carry out these tasks in these municipalities ends on May 31, Pontón stresses, reminding that it is “a key measure” to prevent another fire disaster like last summer’s.
Last summer’s wave of fires devastated 120,000 hectares according to the Galician Government, although the European Copernicus program raises this figure to more than 170,000. The BNG believes that Rueda’s government was not up to the task “neither before nor during” that crisis and is also not fulfilling its commitments to pay compensations and restore the burned territory. “The situation we have today, nine months after the largest fires Galicia has ever suffered, is that Rueda’s government has only paid 15% of the aid requested by agricultural operations and has only restored 6,000 of the 120,000 burned hectares,” Pontón maintains.
The judge in Verín investigating the Oímbra fire maintains only one person under investigation, the worker who carried out the clearing and who is an employee of the private company contracted by the Xunta for this. The case is pending the final proceedings, reports the Superior Court of Justice of Galicia, specifically an expert report and the testimony of several witnesses, including the mayor of this municipality.
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