Risks and natural disasters. Urgent legal treatment of the territorial and urban effects of a catastrophe

Abstract

The regulation of the prevention of natural risks in our legal system
constitutes a mechanism aimed at avoiding or reducing the harmful effects
that this risk could cause in the event that it materializes in a disaster.
However, once the natural disaster has occurred, except in relation to
immediate or primary care while the disaster occurs and at the right moment
afterwards, with the essential purpose of protecting people, a matter of civil
protection, on the contrary, there are no similar mechanisms for forecasting
action from the law of territorial planning and urban planning, to meet the
needs that a natural disaster of great magnitude may demand, there is no, let’s
say, remedial planning.
A recent example of what we expose can be found in the volcanic crisis
that occurred on the Canary Island of La Palma, where after the eruption that
arose on September 19, 2021, in the Cumbre Vieja mountain range and that
affected three municipalities, The urgent need to establish new territorial and
urban planning regulations that offered answers to the important needs that
arose from the catastrophe was evident, without the existence of other preestablished
mechanisms or defined and clear channels to be able to follow or
guide the issuance of this urgent regulation. , absent, but at the same time so
necessary.
This situation forces us to consider the need for specific legislation to
regulate catastrophic situations and, until this takes place, inquire about the
regulatory instruments on which we will rely to provide ourselves with urgent
solutions that serve as a response to the effects territorial and urban planning
that a catastrophe could cause.