Madrid [Spain], August 12: Extreme heat and strong winds caused "fire whirls" as a blaze burned several houses and forced the evacuation of hundreds of people from near a UNESCO-listed national park in northern Spain, authorities said on Monday.
About 800 people were told to abandon their homes in half a dozen villages in the north of the Castile and Leon region, where several wildfires were raging.
Residents of the town of Congosta were spraying houses, trees, and pavement with their garden hoses to fend off the flames that had devoured at least two buildings, while police told them to prepare for evacuation.
The smoke was too thick for firefighting aircraft to deploy.
"There are already several houses that have burned down, we don't know what to do anymore. We're completely defenceless and have been abandoned," said Congosta resident Evangelina Peral Delgado, 70.
High temperatures on Sunday had caused the so-called fire whirls near Las Medulas park, forcing firemen to retreat, said Juan Carlos Suarez-Quinones, chief of environment for the regional government."This occurs when temperatures reach around 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit) in a very confined valley and then suddenly (the fire) enters a more open and oxygenated area. This produces a fireball, a fire whirl," he said.
Scientists say the Mediterranean region's hotter, drier summers put it at high risk of wildfires. Once fires start, dry vegetation and strong winds can cause them to spread rapidly and burn out of control, sometimes provoking fire whirls.
A prolonged heatwave in Spain continued on Monday with temperatures set to reach 42 °C in some regions.
Domingo Aparicio, 77, was evacuated to a nearby town from his home in Cubo de Benavente on Sunday after a warehouse in front of his home burned down.
"How am I supposed to feel? It's always shocking for people close to the catastrophe," he said.
Two or three fires may have been started by lightning strikes, Suarez-Quinones said, but there were indications that the majority were the result of arson, which he described as "environmental terrorism".
In the northern part of neighbouring Portugal, nearly 700 firefighters were battling a blaze that started on Saturday in Trancoso, some 350 km (200 miles) northeast of Lisbon.
So far this year, about 52,000 hectares (200 square miles), or 0.6% of Portugal's total area, have burned, exceeding the 2006-2024 average for the same period by about 10,000 hectares, according to the European Forest Fire Information System.
Firefighters were also battling blazes in Navarra in northeastern Spain and in Huelva in the southwest, authorities said.
Source: Fijian Broadcasting Corporation
