Fire Law: Bill Must Wait Until March to Continue Its Legislative Process

The catastrophe caused by forest fires in the Biobío, Ñuble, and La Araucanía regions reignited a parliamentary debate that had been stalled for over a year. Indeed, the pressure from the emergency pushed forward the Fire Law bill, which this Tuesday was approved unanimously by the Senate and now advances to its third and final legislative stage in the Chamber of Deputies.

However, despite being approved by the Senate Chamber, the legislation could not be placed on the agenda of the Lower House and must wait until March of this year to continue its process. This is considering that the last session of the Chamber before the legislative recess was held on January 28, where the initiative was not discussed, and the next one is scheduled for March 2 of this year.

In simple terms, the legislative idea, submitted by the Ministry of Agriculture and the Ministry of Housing and Urban Planning in October 2023, aims to strengthen the prevention and mitigation of forest and rural fires throughout the national territory, based on a regulatory framework aimed at anticipating disasters and reducing their impact on people, property, infrastructure, and the environment.

According to the proposal, prevention is recognized as a priority and that the emergency response can no longer be merely reactive. In this line, concrete measures are proposed such as firebreaks, participation of organized communities, new management plans, coordination with the National Disaster Prevention and Response Service (Senapred) and the private sector. It also adds the collaboration of small landowners.

It should be noted that the bill has been in the National Congress for over 2 years in total. This is because in March 2025, after passing through the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate Agriculture Committee, the initiative reached the Senate Finance Committee, where it remained for over 10 months.

Legislative Process

In that context, local deputy Félix González (PEV) explained that, although it was approved in the Upper House, the fire law initiative "was not communicated and we could not request it to be placed on the agenda in the Chamber because technically it has not yet arrived, so it will have to be processed in March."

Regarding the lengthy processing of the bill in the Senate, the parliamentarian added that "many of them have been defending the interests of forestry companies and that is why the bill got stuck at the time (...) There is nothing new since the Santa Juana fires (2023) or before to be able to confront the spread of forest fires."

Meanwhile, deputy María Candelaria Acevedo (PC), ahead of the recess, called on the president of the Lower House, deputy José Miguel Castro (RN), to convene a special session "so that we can legislate on this initiative and advance it as soon as possible."

Along the same lines, Acevedo added that "we cannot continue waiting for more hectares to burn, much less for lives to continue being lost due to the lack of updated legislation on the prevention and combat of forest fires."

For her part, also a local deputy, Marlene Pérez (Ind-UDI), highlighted the approval of the Fire Law to advance to its third stage and stated that "the Senate took time we did not have. I insisted repeatedly and sent official requests for it to be expedited, so that this law would be in force before this summer, precisely to avoid the tragedies we are once again fighting today."

Likewise, the parliamentarian committed that in the Lower House, when it is discussed, "we will expedite it, because it is outrageous that, due to political differences, such urgent projects get stalled."

According to deputy Roberto Arroyo (PSC), there is broad support for the bill, "because Chile cannot continue facing these tragedies with insufficient tools. There is urgency, especially after what was experienced in Santa Juana, Valparaíso and the recent ones in Penco-Lirquén and Tomé, I believe there is willingness to pass it soon."

However, Arroyo pointed out that the third stage of the initiative "will not be easy, because in this final discussion important knots appear: real responsibility in prevention, effective sanctions to avoid impunity, and above all that the State has resources and operational capacity. The real capacity to introduce technology in fire prevention, among others."

Scope

One of the central pillars of the bill consists of establishing clear obligations for landowners in risk zones. These include the construction and maintenance of firebreaks, the management and clearing of vegetation, and the implementation of protective measures around inhabited areas or critical infrastructure. These measures aim to reduce the speed and intensity of fires and, in this way, limit their spread.

Positions

From Futuro Madera, a network of trade associations that includes Pymemad, Corma, Acoforag, Aprobosque, AchBiom and Cifag, they maintain a critical analysis of the bill as it approaches its final stage in Congress.

"As a Network of Trade Associations, we consider the dispatched legislation to be a reactive law, designed under the pressure of contingency and not under a long-term State vision. Although the country requires a modern regulatory framework, the approved text presents a fundamental diagnostic error: it expends energy regulating urban planning and land use, but ignores the origin and real causes of fires, setting aside the human and criminal factors that trigger emergencies in the rural world," stated Futuro Madera.

In parallel, Pablo Urrutia, mayor of Quilaco and president of the Association of Mountain Municipalities (Amcordi), described the legislative progress as a matter of life or death for rural areas. "For municipalities like ours, this is not just a legal advance, it is a survival tool," he affirmed.

In the same vein, Urrutia emphasized the new role of municipalities, where "the most relevant thing is that the paradigm changes, we stop looking only at the emergency to focus on territorial planning. With this law we will have real powers to demand exclusion perimeters and protected interface zones, forcing urban and rural planning to consider family safety as an absolute priority."

Source:Diario Concepción