About 10,000 hectares were affected by a major fire in the province of Alicante, in southeastern Spain, the government of the Valencia region said on Tuesday (16).
The fire was caused by lightning that struck in Vall d’Ebo on Saturday night (13). From there, it spread rapidly because of strong winds, having displaced more than a thousand inhabitants of that region. About 300 firefighters spent the night trying to control the blaze, with the help of 24 tanker planes and helicopters.
The regional president of Valencia, Ximo Puig, described the fire, which reached a perimeter of 65 kilometers, as of “enormous proportions”. According to him in an interview with Antena Três channel, the situation is complex because the fire has been advancing at a speed impossible to follow.
Still in the Valencia region, more fires to the north of the city of the same name were being fought by firefighters, with the support of at least ten tanker planes.
In northern Spain, in the Aragon region, rescuers managed to stabilize a large fire that had started on Saturday (13) and burned more than 6,000 hectares. About 1,500 people were evacuated, but the fire at least did not reach the natural park of Moncayo, a mountain that dominates the landscape of the region.
In neighboring Portugal, however, a fire that had been brought under control on the night of Friday (12) was reborn because of strong winds. The destruction reached the Serra da Estrela natural park, located in the center of the country and recognized by Unesco, according to the Portuguese Civil Protection.
More than a thousand firefighters were sent to the scene to fight the fire, which burned more than 15,000 hectares according to provisional data from the Portuguese authorities.
In 2022, Spain recorded 391 fires, fueled by very high temperatures, sometimes over 40°C, and a persistent drought. According to the most recent data from Effis, the European information system on forest fires, they have burned more than 270,000 hectares this year alone in the country – the most punished in Europe. It is triple the area burned in the whole of 2021, of 84,800 hectares.
In Portugal, there were 195 fires this year, which destroyed 84,717 hectares, according to Effis data.
