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Ten (10) years ago, exactly on 06/18/2014, the Urban Development Division (DDU) of the Minvu sent a preventive instruction, via DDU 269 Circular ORD. No. 0350, to all the municipalities of the country, telling them that in their Communal Regulatory Plans (PRC) they incorporate the risk of fire threat. The same instruction was sent to the respective regional ministerial secretaries (Seremi) in relation to the Intercommunal Regulatory Plans (PRI) and Metropolitan, which are those of Santiago, Valparaíso and Concepción, taking into account that not all regions of the country have a PRI, see link.
https://www.minvu.gob.cl/wp-
The instruction from the DDU of the Minvu went further by pointing out that these Seremis had to set deadlines for updating the PRC in the municipalities whose populated territories present an imminent risk of fire. According to the DDU, and as indicated in article 2.1.17 of the General Urban Planning and Construction Ordinance (OGUC), the identification of the territory under threat of fire risk must be carried out based on a well-founded study.
On this matter, opinion No. E64056 of 12/29/2020 of the Comptroller General of the Republic has referred to a non-compliance by the municipality of Quilpué, which recently suffered a raging fire and therefore it is essential that all recipients of that DDU of the Minvu proceed in the terms that they were told 10 years ago.
This opinion makes it clear that said municipality did not include the threat of forest fire in its risk study, pointing out that the private companies that participated in the tender did not include professionals specializing in that matter in their team. In point 5.7 of the “Risk and Environmental Protection Study” prepared as part of the update of the Quilpué PRC, the issue of forest fires is discussed and there you can see how the municipal authorities, CONAF and the consultants concluded, for example, that:
a) a management plan is required rather than the definition of risk areas within the PRC,
b) if it is taxed as a risk area, its development is frozen, and
c) the definition of those risk areas “requires the modification of legal bodies such as the Forest Law, the OGUC or LGUC that define who will be the bodies responsible for the review of the studies founded and their mitigation works for the lifting of the restriction.”
It is evident that these participants ignored the instructions of the DDU and failed to comply with various opinions of the Comptroller’s Office regarding the well-founded studies of the PRC and the application of article 2.1.17 of the OGUC. Obviously, as a consequence of what they reported, a fire threat risk study was not carried out as part of the Quilpué PRC update and risk areas associated with this latent danger were not defined.
The fact that there is no body responsible for reviewing the fire threat risk study cannot serve as an excuse for not doing so because that implies an “interpretation” that leaves a standard without application. On the other hand, the risks cannot be eliminated through mitigation works, since that implies a modification of the PRC. What the PRC must do is establish the permitted uses in the risk areas and the mitigation works are those that protect the buildings associated with those permitted uses. For example, the municipality could define the risky sector as a park and maintain a clear area (mitigation work) that prevents recreational equipment from being destroyed if a fire occurs (risk). That would have allowed the “development” of the area defined as risk, but apparently that development is not what the municipality of Quilpué wanted.
It should be mentioned that the professionals who underwrite the risk study are not specialists in forest fires, but they did not have to be. The bidding rules for the PRC update, as we mentioned, did not make demands regarding the issue of risk due to the threat of forest fire despite the fact that Quilpué has suffered them repeatedly.
From all this, we conclude that we are very far from having responsible urban planning and we cannot expect the Comptroller’s Office to be reviewing all the PRC studies and the suitability of the professionals who prepare them. The first responsibility lies with the mayors, expressing that the National Disaster Prevention and Response Service (SENAPRED) of Law No. 21,364, published in the Official Gazette on 08/07/2021, is ambiguous and contributes little, in such a way that reengineering by the government is urgent if we want to reduce the fires that repeatedly hit us.
Patrick Herman