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COWS

Fifty cows dead after fires ravage two Swiss farm buildings

Two fires broke out at separate farms in the Payerne/Avenches area on the Vaud/Fribourg border early on Saturday morning, leaving around fifty cows dead.

Published: 31 July 2017 08:56 CEST
Fifty cows dead after fires ravage two Swiss farm buildings
Photo: Fribourg police
The weekend’s events come just two weeks after a series of seven fires in the same region killed 24 horses.
 
The emergency services were called to a farm in Payerne at around 1.10am on Saturday morning, Vaud police said in a statement. 
 
Eleven cows were saved, but around a dozen died, plus several calves. Their owners were successfully evacuated and no person was injured.
 
Less than an hour later a police patrol spotted another fire on an isolated farm building between Domdidier and Dompierre, Fribourg police said. 
 
Police and the fire service attended the scene, and were able to free a number of cows from the barn. However a number suffered serious burns and had to be put down. 
 
A police spokesman told news agency ATS that of the 108 cows at the farm, 36 died. 
 
Those that were freed and ran off were later recuperated by the farmer, he added.
 
Currently the cause of the fires is unknown, both police forces said. 
 
No link has been established between the two fires. 
 
Two weeks ago, also in the early hours of the morning, a series of seven fires broke out in the same region, including one at the National Equestrian Centre in Avenches, where more than 20 horses died. 
 
Police said those fires were criminal acts, and later arrested a suspect.
 
 

WILDFIRES

Military joins fight against new wildfire on Spain’s Tenerife

Spain's military deployed Thursday to help battle a wildfire on the Canary Island of Tenerife, which reignited after ravaging thousands of hectares of land in August, officials said.

Published: 5 October 2023 15:30 CEST
Military joins fight against new wildfire on Spain's Tenerife

Some 120 people were battling the blaze in the northeast of the island, including 60 members of the army’s Military Emergency Unit and 26 army vehicles, the unit wrote on the social media network X, formerly called Twitter.

The regional government of Tenerife requested assistance from the army late Wednesday as strong winds fanned the flames.

The fire forced the evacuation of some 3,000 people from the town of Santa Ursula, and another 200 from La Orotava, the regional government said.

The blaze — which first broke out on August 15 — was declared under control on September 11 after destroying around 15,000 hectares (37,000 acres) of woodland, but was never fully put out.

The fire rekindled on Wednesday amid scorching temperatures in Tenerife, with the mercury nearing 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit) in some parts of the island.

“It is the same fire. We have to remember that it was declared under control but not extinguished,” the director of Tenerife’s emergency services, Ivan Martin, told local television, adding the fire was burning closer to built-up areas this time around.

Winds had died down in the morning, helping firefighters in the battle against the blaze, but they were forecast to pick up in the afternoon as temperatures soar.

Popular tourist areas on Tenerife, part of the Canaries archipelago in the Atlantic Ocean, have so far been unaffected and its two airports have been operating normally.

The seven-island archipelago is located off the northwest coast of Africa and southwest of mainland Spain. At their nearest point, the islands are 100 kilometres (60 miles) from Morocco.

As global temperatures rise due to climate change, scientists have warned that heatwaves will become more frequent and more intense.

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