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FIRE

Thousands evacuated after fire on Spain’s La Palma

Spanish officials have evacuated more than 2,500 people from La Palma in the Canary Islands, where fire has destroyed 4,500 hectares (11,000 acres) of land.

Published: 16 July 2023 12:20 CEST
Thousands evacuated after fire on Spain's La Palma
A picture taken on July 15th 2023 on the Spanish Canary Island of La Palma shows the evacuated town of Tijarafe surrounded by smoke billowing from wild fire near La Caldera de Taburiente National Park. The 2.560 residents of Tijarafe have been evacuated and 2.000 hectares burnt after a wild fire started in the night of July 15 in Puntagorda, northwest of the island. During the last week, the Canary islands have experienced a heat wave that saw Spain's highest temperatures. (Photo by STRINGER / AFP)

Around 300 firefighters on the ground are working to bring the blaze under control, supported by firefighting aircraft, they added.

“The fire advanced very quickly,” said Fernando Clavijo, president of the Canary Islands regional government.

He blamed “the wind, the climate conditions as well as the heatwave that we are living through” for the swift spread of the blaze.

“It’s a fire that has gathered strength in very little time,” Tourism Minister Héctor Gómez told reporters.

Sergio Rodriguez, head of the La Palma Council and the island’s main authority, called on people to respect the evacuation to allow the emergency services to work more easily.

The fire broke out in the morning in the Puntagorda district before spreading quickly, said a statement from local officials.

Tijarafe’s mayor, Marcos Lorenzo, told TVE television that not all the town had been evacuated.

According to data from the European Forest Fire Information System (EFFIS), Spain suffered nearly 500 wildfires in 2022, which destroyed more than 300,000 hectares, the worst figure in Europe.

So far this year, it has lost another 66,000 hectares to fire, according to the latest EFFIS data.

The situation is all the more worrying in a country that has been hit hard by the effects of climate change, with a series of crushing heatwaves as well as less and less rainfall.

The national meteorological agency also registered record highs during exceptionally hot weather in mainland Spain.

Spain’s Canary Islands lie off the northwest coast of Africa.

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WILDFIRE

Wildfire rages in Spain’s Alicante as temperatures rise

A forest fire that started in abnormally hot temperatures has burned through more than 500 hectares (1,235 acres) near Spain's Costa Blanca and forced 180 people to flee their homes, officials said Monday.

Published: 15 April 2024 14:47 CEST
Wildfire rages in Spain's Alicante as temperatures rise

The fire began on Sunday near Tárbena in the Valencia region (Alicante province) as temperatures reached 30 degrees Celcius (86 degrees Fahrenheit), which is unusually high for the season.

Heat, wind and low humidity fuelled the blaze which media reports said may have started with an agricultural fire.

“The fire is still active” after a “complicated” night for firefighters, the region’s emergency services wrote on X, the former Twitter, saying the blaze had destroyed “more than 500 hectares (1,235 acres)” of land.

“Around 180 people have been evacuated” from the two worst-hit areas, Pilar Bernabe, the central government representative in Valencia, told public television.

Eight air units battled the blaze alongside firefighters and troops from the UME military emergency unit which is called in to help with larger fires.

According to the AEMET national weather service, temperatures rose above 30C in more than 65 areas across Spain on Saturday, including places as far north as the Pyrenees, Galicia and the Castilla y Leon region.

Tárbena is about 20 kilometres (12 miles) from the coast, near the coastal resort of Benidorm.

In 2022, some 500 wildfires destroyed huge more than 300,000 hectares of land in Spain, a record in Europe, according to the European Forest Fire Information System (EFFIS).

READ ALSO: Heat records for April already broken across Spain

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