Santiago Villanueva: Safety and emergency response are priorities for Galicia

How important are safety and emergency response in Galicia, and what objectives have been set in this area?

Safety and emergency response are top priorities for Galicia. Our main objective is to protect people, property and the environment, but to do so increasingly through anticipation and prevention, rather than merely responding once an emergency has already occurred.

Galicia has an integrated civil protection and emergency response system based on the coordination of all public authorities and the various services that may be called upon in the event of an emergency.

At regional level, we have a Directorate-General for Emergencies and Home Affairs and the Galician Emergency Agency, which acts as the implementing body for the region’s civil protection and emergency management policy, as well as the Galician National Police Detachment (UPA), the Coastguard, the forest fire prevention services, and other emergency response resources. In addition to this, there are various municipal emergency services: civil protection services, 33 supra-municipal emergency response teams, 25 fire stations belonging to firefighting and rescue consortia, 8 municipal fire stations and more than 230 volunteer civil protection groups.

And when the situation calls for it, the state security forces, local police, health services, other state resources such as the Military Emergency Unit (UME), and other public and private resources also step in.

How are all these resources co-ordinated?

The coordination of all these resources in the event of routine emergencies is carried out through the 112 mobilisation protocols; and in the case of civil protection emergencies, it is primarily organised through our Regional Emergency Plan (Platerga) and other special civil protection plans, which set out how public authorities and services should be organised and coordinated in the event of a civil protection emergency. The aim is that, regardless of where an incident occurs, we can mobilise the most appropriate resources and scale up the response according to the severity of the situation.

One of the key priorities is prevention and, in this regard, we are moving towards a system in which information on risks, resources, incidents and operations is increasingly integrated and available in real time. In this area, for example, a Civil Protection geoportal has been developed to provide the public with as much information as possible about risks, as well as an app to assist volunteer civil protection groups with managing their operations, integrated with the 112 emergency management system.

In short, we are building a system that is more proactive, better connected and, above all, better coordinated. 

In which areas or sectors is public-private partnership particularly needed?

Public-private partnerships are particularly necessary in areas such as self-protection, technological and industrial risks, communications, digitalisation, the management of major events and certain specialised technical capabilities.

Whenever a risk situation arises, we need to make all the necessary resources available to the response team. In this regard, we have various partnership agreements with professional bodies (psychologists and social workers), NGOs and voluntary associations in the field of civil protection and emergencies (Casaga, the Red Cross, etc.)

Prevention requires businesses and public authorities to share information, identify risks, draw up and test their emergency plans, and have a thorough understanding of how they should be integrated into the public civil protection system. To this end, a new self-protection regulation has been adopted, focusing on real-time awareness of the risks posed by temporary events and on the implementation of plans, while encouraging drills in industries covered by the Seveso regulations.

Another very important area of public-private partnership is innovation. Artificial intelligence, big data analytics, predictive systems, drones, sensors, advanced communications and new decision-making tools are evolving very rapidly. Cooperation with businesses and centres of expertise enables us to incorporate these capabilities more rapidly and efficiently.

How important is anticipation when it comes to workplace risk prevention?

We are seeing increasingly extreme weather events and a growing concentration of people at certain events and in certain spaces. To this we must add technological, industrial and energy-related risks associated with new infrastructure and, of course, those arising from an increasingly digitalised and interconnected society.

That is why planning ahead is essential. This means continuing to improve our information and forecasting systems and the issuing of civil protection alerts, ensuring we have increasingly accurate risk maps, strengthening local authority planning, and carrying out more drills to check that what is set out in a plan actually works when an emergency arises. We also need to work on coordinating all resources so that all the parties involved can act as a single system when necessary.

Who are the stakeholders who should be involved in this objective?

As part of this task, local councils are also required to draw up and keep their Municipal Emergency Action Plans (PAMs in Spanish) up to date, based on the risks identified in each area. The obligation to draw up the PAMs forms part of the provisions set out in the regional special civil protection plans addressing the main risks: forest fires (Peifoga), floods (Inungal), the transport of dangerous goods by road and rail (Transgal), and industrial premises that process or store hazardous substances (External Emergency Plans). The fact that local authorities draw up and implement municipal plans to address the risks identified within their area helps minimise damage in the event of an emergency by ensuring a coordinated, effective and efficient response.

It should be noted that the regional government provides local councils with guides and templates to help fulfil this obligation, with the aim of making their work easier and ensuring a consistent structure. In addition, the Xunta (regional government) launched a grant scheme this year, with a budget of €300,000 , aimed at municipalities with fewer than 10,000 inhabitants that are required to have municipal action plans (MAPs) for forest fire risk, with the aim of supporting them in drafting or updating these plans. More than a hundred local councils in Galicia have benefited from this funding.

The Xunta also maintains a significant commitment to local authorities by funding more than 50 per cent of the operating costs of fire and rescue consortia and supra-municipal emergency response teams, as well as co-funding the operating costs of civil protection volunteer groups and providing local councils with equipment for civil protection and emergency services.

And, finally, there is one challenge that I regard as cross-cutting: the citizens. In other words, an informed population – one that can recognise the risks, is familiar with the warning systems and knows how to respond in an emergency – is also a civil protection resource.

That is why we must continue to work towards fostering a culture of prevention and self-protection. The ultimate aim is not merely to have more resources available to respond when an emergency occurs, but to ensure that fewer emergencies arise, that when they do occur we can detect them sooner, and that, when intervention is necessary, we can do so more rapidly, in a way that's more coordinated and more effective.