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Clearing of undergrowth
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 To live in forest medium attracts more and more followers of the return to the nature and present of many advantages.
N the other hand, this choice imposes certain obligations, in particular in the areas Provence the Alps Riviera, Poitou Charente, Aquitaine, Languedoc Roussillon, Corsica, Midi the Pyrenees and the departments of Ardeche and Drome, where forest fires multiply each summer.
To reduce the risks and the consequences of the fires, the legislator enacted simple rules gathered in the law of orientation on the forest of 2001 which makes clearing of undergrowth (also called undergrowth clearance) obligatory.
The Forest Code defines undergrowth clearance as the whole of the operations whose objective is to decrease the intensity and to limit the propagation of the fires by the reduction of vegetable fuels, by guaranteeing a rupture of the continuity of vegetable cover and while carrying out the pruning of the maintained subjects and the elimination of remanent of cuts.
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This undergrowth clearance relates to all the properties located in forest, in the garrigues, or surrounded by plantations, and the totality of the grounds, frames or not, located in urban area or in the allotments, campsites and parking spaces caravans, explains Arnaud Kocur, of the department of communication of the firemen of the department of the VAr, before detailing the principal operations to be carried out:
• To remove the dead branches and trees
• To collect the dry sheets and grasses 20 meters around constructions and of the installations
• To move away the houppiers (together of the branches and foliages of a tree or a shrub) to at least 3 meters from constructions or installations
• To move away all the houppiers 3 m from/to each other
• To remove all the shrubs between the maintained trees
• Pruning of the maintained trees (on the 2/3 their height), until a height minimum of 2,5m for the subjects of more than 4meters
• To release the access roads on a height of 4m, to ensure a minimum gauge of passage of 4 m: an obligation which is added to that of undergrowth clearance on 10 m of depth on both sides of the access road to the dwelling
• To cut to short-nap cloth all grasses.
In short, it is a building site, not a pastime for gardeners of Sunday. Of as much, let us recall it, that clearing of undergrowth is an obligation, with the load of the owner.
If it is not carried out, impétrant it exposes itself to legal proceedings and fines. Without counting that the commune, after having put it in residence, will carry out undergrowth clearance and will invoice the service by the means of the tax services.
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 The zone to be cleared of undergrowth is generally of 50 meters around the dwellings, a distance which can be changed to 100, even 200 m per order of the prefect. Who more is, the mayor, while using of his policing powers, can on his commune, to push back with maximum and not with minima this distance, specifies the fireman.
Each one can take note in detail rules in force with the town hall of its commune.
To carry out a clearing of undergrowth in the code of practice, it is thus advised to address itself at a specialized company, registered near the forest trade union.
• Priority: the protection of the goods and the people
All these provisions have one goal: to decrease the intensity of fire, of to break vertical and horizontal continuity and to slow down, even stop its propagation. Other notable advantages, the protection of the goods and the people and facilitation of the work of the sappers firemen at the time of their interventions.
From June, one enters during the most critical time for forest fires, it is necessary absolutely that all is cleared of undergrowth perfectly, close-cropped grass.
In July and August, period at the severe weather risks (there is wind and the weather is hot), difficult to intervene, because it is interdict to use a word-oriented machine in forest, because if a stone is touched, one causes a spark which can ignite very quickly has vegetation.
At the end of an undergrowth clearance, the destruction by the fire of the cut vegetation, which should not remain close to the dwellings, is a very regulated operation also. It is indeed allowed only after one preliminary declaration in town hall, from February at the end of May, after midday, if the wind is lower than 40 km/h.
This destruction must proceed with more than 200 meters of the forest, near a water point and under the monitoring of a person who must remain present until the complete combustion of the vegetation wastes. From June at the end of September, in red period, total ban to burn.
In this case of figure, you will have to call upon a specialized company which will carry out the crushing of green waste or to invest in crushing.
• The good reflex
For the of the department of Var fireman, in summer period the private individuals must redouble vigilance: not to smoke nor to organize barbecues in forest. He explains why the starting points of fire are very seldom done close to the dwelling houses, but often in edge of road or on small ways.
Thus, according to him, undergrowth clearance does not make so much lower the number of the fires which it constitutes the best protection of the goods and the people in the event of forest fire.
• To have the good reflex
In the event of starting point of fire, remain partitioned on your premise and block up, the shutters closed after having returned water reserve, the pipes and the bottles of gas. People are in safety in dwellings into hard, often out of concrete.
The agglo resists fire during 4 to 6 a.m., whereas a forest fire which leaves on a dwelling does not last, to the great maximum, which fifteen minutes, conclude it. Given that clearing of undergrowth had been made in the rules.
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Clearing of undergrowth
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