From 15 June, the period of serious risk for forest fires began across the entire regional territory, resulting in an alert from the Regional Forest Fire Prevention Service (AIB).
With the Union Ordinance n. 16 of 19 June 2024, the Municipality of Gravina intended to integrate obligations and prohibitions deriving from regional legislation.
The Ordinance recalls that in all municipal areas at risk of forest fire and/or immediately adjacent to them, it is strictly prohibited:
a) light fires of all kinds;
b) explode mines or use explosives;
c) use flame or electric devices to cut metals;
d) use engines (except for those used to carry out authorized forestry work and not in conflict with the PPMPF and other regulations in force), stoves or incinerators that produce sparks or embers;
e) keep kilns, wood-fired ovens and uncontrolled public and private landfills in operation;
f) smoking, throwing matches, cigars or lit cigarettes and carrying out any other operation that could create an immediate or intermediate risk of fire;
g) carry out pyrotechnic activities, light fireworks, launch rockets of any type and/or paper hot air balloons, better known as flying lanterns equipped with open flames, as well as other pyrotechnic articles;
h) transit and/or park vehicles on unpaved roads within wooded areas;
i) transit with motorized vehicles outside state, provincial, municipal, private and local roads, burdened by public transit services, with the exception of service vehicles and agro-forestry-pastoral activities in compliance with the rules and regulations in force ;
l) abandon waste in the woods and in illegal landfills.
The Ordinance reminds that owners, tenants and/or managers in any capacity of rustic properties, lands and areas of any nature and their appurtenances to implement all the necessary passive defense works for fire prevention, through regular periodic cleaning of the aforementioned sites, providing to the removal of dry grass, brushwood, vegetation residues and any other flammable material, as well as to provide for the regular and periodic cleaning and maintenance of the soil itself, creating protective strips of no less than fifteen meters along the entire perimeter of its land, free of residues of vegetation, so as to prevent any fire, crossing the bottom, from spreading to the surrounding and/or neighboring areas.
The same provision is given to the owners, tenants and managers of cereal cultivation fields, within ten days of the conclusion of the combine harvesting operations, they must create a precesa or protective strip free of any residue of vegetation around the perimeter and inside the cultivated area, to a continuous and constant width of at least fifteen metres, or in any case such as to ensure that the fire does not spread to surrounding and/or neighboring areas. Farmers who carry out sod sowing are exempt from this obligation (art. 3 Law 38/2016).
Said obligations will be in force until 30 September, the day set by the Puglia Region as the end of the period declared to be at serious fire risk, unless extended.
