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Eugenio Cabezas
Periana
Tuesday, 24 September 2024, 16:15
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The fire station in Periana in the Axarquía to the east of Malaga province remains closed after provincial authority, the Diputación de Málaga, announced its “temporary closure” in July this year, despite regular calls from the town’s mayor Meritxell Vizuete for it to be reestablished. Others in her socialist PSOE party have backed her call, as have local residents of Periana and the surrounding towns and villages that the service covers, who have held protests.
Now Malaga province’s PSOE spokesperson Josele Gónzalez has also added his voice to the appeal and together with Vizuete, he has asked the president of the provincial fire brigade (CPB), Manuel Marmolejo, to reconsider the “unilateral decision” to close the fire station.
“We are asking him to sit down with the mayors affected and look for a solution, as almost 10,000 residents of five municipalities in the Axarquía are affected,” he said, adding that the decision is “depriving these residents of an essential service and leaving them in a situation of absolute insecurity”. He went on to say, “The residents of Periana and the other affected municipalities live in fear, some have taken self-protection measures on their own, because they do not know how they will be able to react to an emergency because of the delay in response,” pointing out that in the event of an emergency the firefighters “have to come from Vélez-Málaga”.
Vizuete said that since the closure in June there have been several fires in the town. “In June it was a car, in August it was a small fire in a rural area, last week we suffered another fire in which two hectares were affected, about 200 metres from houses,” she said.
“We are living in a situation of fear and insecurity, because we don't know what is going to happen. In less than two months the fire brigade has had to come to Periana three times. It has been a mistake, they have to reopen the fire station in Periana, she said.
In a meeting held on Tuesday 17 September the Mancomunidad association of town halls in the Axarquía unanimously approved a motion requesting the reopening of the Periana fire station. The motion also calls for the structural reinforcement of the CPB staff to improve the service and avoid future closures. “All the political forces represented in the Mancomunidad, including the PP, have supported this joint motion in which we demand the reopening of the fire station in Periana,” said the PSOE spokesperson at the mancomunidad, Antonio Yuste.
He pointed out that the service also covers Alcaucín, Alfarnate, Alfarnatejo, Periana and La Viñuela, a total of 10,000 people that in summer multiply to 30,000. “It is the first time in history since the provincial fire brigade has existed that it has decided to close one of its fire prevention centres. It is nonsense, it is a blow to the small and medium-sized municipalities of the Axarquía, to which the Diputación should attend,” Yuste said.
Diputación sources told SUR in July that the decision to close the fire station “is temporary” and that it has been adopted “for technical reasons, in agreement at all times with the fire brigade operations” and added, “The villages of Periana, Colmenar and Alcaucín are not going to be left unattended.”
The PP spokesperson in the Diputación, Cristóbal Ortega, has criticised “the irresponsible policy of false, misinformation and confrontation” of the PSOE in Malaga following “the technical decision” to relocate the Periana fire station to Vélez-Málaga, “A measure of an exclusively operational nature that improves the response capacity and safety of the entire Axarquía,” he said.
Ortega reiterated in a statement to the mayor of Periana “the offer of the fire consortium to provide the town with a rapid response emergency vehicle, with a 400 litre tank, in addition to the training of Civil Protection volunteers or Local Police officers, as happens in many other municipalities in the province.”
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