authorities of the environment ministries Y Defending agreed on Saturday afternoon with the Ministery of security correntino the establishment of a joint command center to coordinate all actions in the fight against forest fires that have already consumed near 800 thousand hectares.
the minister of Security This afternoon, Buenaventura Duarte, from Corrientes, paid a visit to the rural school in the town of San Miguel. There, for a week, has been the command center and operational base of a force made up of national agencies, public companies and specialized teams from half a dozen provinces that fight fires in the Iberá Wetlands area.
The official held a meeting with the undersecretary of Coordination in Emergencies of the Ministry of DefenseRoberto Corti, and with the director of the National Fire Management Service (SMNF), Alberto Seufferheld, with whom he designed a coordinated work mechanism for all the units that fight the flames in that province.
Corti affirmed in dialogue with Télam that “with the idea of looking for cooperation strategies that make fighting with fire more efficient”, on Friday he traveled to the city of Corrientes to analyze alternatives with provincial officials. Today, after a visit by Minister Duarte in which until now the command post in San Miguel, it was agreed the “strategy to unify efforts”.
We continue to work together with other State agencies to combat the fires in #Currents.
From the Secretariat of Military Coordination in Emergencies we met with members of @AmbienteNacion, @Army_Arg, @CorrientesGob and Civil Defense to coordinate tasks. pic.twitter.com/kgrsARKUlM
– Ministry of Defense (@MindefArg) February 19, 2022
“The authorities from Corrientes were able to learn today about the resources we have available through satellite images and helicopter flights of the Armed Forces to reconnoiter new outbreaks, they saw how the telecommunications system that set up the army so as not to lose contact with the brigade units deployed at different points, and they were also able to see the virtual platform in operation where we can view all the data in real time,” he stressed.
Corti maintained that “from now on a central command will be set up at the headquarters of the Ministry of Security Correntino, in Salta 511 of the provincial capital, and there screens will be displayed in which the provincial authorities will be able to see all the same information that we have and they will be the ones who lead the efforts and establish priorities”.
The official explained that the SNMF of the Ministry of the Environment of the Nation will be in charge of coordinating activities on the ground, while the undersecretary of Coordination in Emergencies of the Ministry of Defence “It will bear the responsibility of facilitating the logistics of operations as it has done up to now through the armed forces.”
The official stressed that “this mechanism led by the government provincial With the support of the national organizations, it will coordinate all the forces that are fighting the fires in Corrientes at this time and all the firefighters and brigade units that are already on their way from different provinces; to that we must add the forces deployed by each government municipal and the brigadistas of the armed forces who are also about to be deployed”.
“Another task that we took on was the training of the forestry engineers of the Forest Resources Directorate of Corrientes, which will be responsible for continuing to upload data to the management platform that we are all going to use,” Corti concluded.
In addition to Duarte, Corti and Seufferheld, the commander of the 1st Division of the Argentine Army, General Aldo Ferrari, participated in the meeting in San Miguel; the commander of the XII Monte Brigade, Colonel Sergio Jurzisyn; and the deputy director of Forest Resources of Corrientes, Walter Sanchez; among other officials.
For a week, the national government, in coordination with provincial authorities, has deployed a series of measures to respond to the emergency caused by the advance of the flames in Corrientes, by sending brigade members, heavy machinery, helicopters and hydrant planes, which They seek to contain forest fires and extinguish them.
This morning, the governor of Corrientes Gustavo Valdés told Radio Miter the dialogue he had with President Alberto Fernández and pointed out that the head of state “committed to send economic aid” to reverse the impressive losses generated by forest fires in the province. of the Argentine coast, a figure that already exceeded 25 billion pesos.
