A wildfire in northeast Spain has burned more than 12,000 hectares in two days, with crews yet to secure any part of a front stretching almost 60 kilometres, the regional government of Aragón has said. Spanish media have reported the blaze as the largest recorded in the country this year.
The fire started at midday on July 15 near Orés, a village in the Cinco Villas district of Zaragoza province, and ran through pine woodland and low scrub. Aragón’s regional interior minister Roberto Bermúdez de Castro said the risk of further spread remained very high and that no stretch of the perimeter could be treated as consolidated.
He said crews had come through a difficult night but had held the two places that concerned them most, Uncastillo and Malpica de Arba. Both remain evacuated along with Orés, Asín and Luesia, while Petilla de Aragón, a village belonging to neighbouring Navarre but surrounded by Aragón, was cleared as a precaution.
About a hundred of some 700 evacuees were sleeping in a sports hall at Ejea de los Caballeros, the rest finding their own accommodation. Ten houses and a goat farm have been damaged at Asín, where a power line remains cut.
Some 450 personnel, more than 30 aircraft and over 300 soldiers of the Military Emergency Unit (UME) were working the fire on July 17, reinforced by crews from Navarre, Castilla y León, La Rioja and the Valencia region. Bermúdez de Castro singled out local farmers, more than a hundred of whom have brought tractors to help cut firebreaks.
The blaze started six days after a fire at Los Gallardos in Almería, southeast Spain, which killed 13 people and burned about 7,000 hectares in the deadliest such disaster in Andalusia’s recorded history. Seven Britons, three Belgians, a French national, an American and a Spaniard died there, most in their cars as they tried to flee.
Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, who travelled to Almería on July 13, warned then that Spain faced a complex summer and repeated his call for a national pact on the climate emergency. Aragón had passed 40C for several days before the fire started and the State Meteorological Agency (Aemet) expects a third heatwave from the weekend.
The European Union’s Copernicus emergency mapping service was activated for the Aragón fire on July 15. Portugal and France have both called on the EU Civil Protection Mechanism this month, though Spain, which sent 118 firefighters to Portugal on July 3, has not.
Fires were also burning at La Mierla in Guadalajara and at Lozoyuela north of Madrid, where a man has been arrested on suspicion of starting the blaze. No cause has been established for the Orés fire.
