Sunday, May 4, 2025, 23:46
The Plenary of the City of Riba-Roja de Túria approved the new cartography of delimitation of the urban-forest interface corresponding to the municipal term in compliance with the Law of Planning of the Territory, Urbanism and Landscape (LOTUP), where it is dictated that the municipalities of municipalities with forest floors must delimit all the urban nucleus susceptible to suffering risk of forest fire. forest land or in an area of influence (understood as all that non -forest land that is less than 500 meters of forest soil.
This legal instrument is responsible for cactographically identifying and delimiting any urbanization, population core, building or installation susceptible to suffering risk of forest fire, whose approval must be approved by the municipal plenary and subsequently transferred to the General Directorate competent in fire prevention.
The owners of the urbanizations, population centers, buildings or facilities located in forest terreros or in areas of forest influence must execute the appropriate measures to minimize the risk of fire in compliance with current current regulations, mainly with vegetation in its closest radius, while corresponding to the City Council require its execution, in accordance with the regulations of common administrative procedure and legal regime of public administrations.
The municipal cartography elaborated for this purpose defines the area of forest influence as the surface constituted by the area surrounding the forest land, with a width of up to 500 meters. In the case of Riba-Roja de Túria, the forest land affected both by the forest terrain and its area of influence represents more than 80% of the municipality.
The City Council of Riba-Roja de Túria has analyzed the ex officio cartography prepared by the General Directorate of Forest Fire Prevention in which it has warned errors by not considering “many of the buildings located on non-urbanizable land that appear in the Urban Catastral Register and that do not appear spent in the cartography referred by the General Directorate.”
Urban-Forest Interface
Therefore, the cartography amended by the municipal technicians represents the urban-forest interface with all the buildings and nuclei of urban and urbanizable land within the forest land and its area of influence of 500 meters, as well as the areas of action in a strip of 50 meters around them. The elaborated documentation contains the memory about the methodology of the interface calculation and the areas of action in the stipulated stripes.
The isolated buildings located in forest or adjacent lands with them must have a defense area against the risk of forest fires of at least 30 meters, which will be extended depending on the slope of the land, with 50 meters away when the surface is greater than 30%. In areas of new implementation, landscaped areas may be incorporated under preventive gardening criteria and with the possibility of integrating vegetation risk system. Cartography also includes other criteria such as existing roads in forest areas and that must be extended, at least, to two in total, with their established characteristics, the treatment of inner vegetation, the water points that must be installed in the area in terms of number and location, as well as the self -protection plans in the urbanizations and the isolated buildings.
The mayor of Riba-Roja de Túria, Robert Raga, stressed that «the work done by the municipal technicians and workers in a subject as important as forest fires in our municipality, and, therefore, among all we must be aware of the need to take precautions and appropriate measures to prevent possible risks, mainly, during the summer; Each part must assume its obligations ».
