This, after among those responsible for the tragic fire that affected Viña del Mar, Quilpué and Villa Alemana in 2023 were former officials of the institution.
President Gabriel Boric announced that more rigorous psychological exams will be carried out to become a Conaf brigade member, within the framework of the launch of the 2024-2025 Fire Prevention, Mitigation and Control Action Plan.
“Last year we made a very significant budget increase in CONAF. This year we consolidated that budget and, in addition, this year we are making a very significant budget increase in Senapred. We are going to allocate a historic amount of more than $156 billion to combat forest fires,” Boric said.
Along with this, the head of state explained the reasons for raising the standards for the selection of personnel for the Conaf Fire Management Program, remembering that among the people formalized for the tragic fire that affected Viña del Mar, Quilpué and Villa Alemana last year, there were former officials of the institution.
“Last year’s experience with the fire in Viña del Mar is something that we cannot look aside. And there I want to highlight the work within Conaf itself and the PDI to be able to find those responsible for this tremendous, tremendous tragedy,” President Boric stressed.
Along these lines, he deepened that “From 2024 onwards, the psychological tests for hiring (brigade members) are more extensive and exhaustive, both for field and office personnel.which will be complemented with long-term work based on the recommendations provided by the panel of experts in the field that we created this year.”
Among the new features of the 2024-2025 plan is the protocol signed by Senapred and Conaf, which establishes a coordination framework for the management of forest fires, from monitoring to emergency response.
This includes the classification of technical alerts in green, yellow and red, according to the severity of the fire and defines the procedures for the communication and distribution of information between both institutions through the CONAF Digital Information System for Operations Control platform.