MADRID (dpa-AFX) – In Spain, fire-fighting teams continued to fight against several forest fires on Monday. According to the state TV broadcaster RTVE, a fire around 60 kilometers northeast of Alicante has destroyed around 3,500 hectares of forest since Saturday. Around 1,000 people had to leave their homes in the Pego area as a precaution. There were two other, albeit smaller, forest fires in the autonomous community of Valencia.
Another large forest fire raged in the region around the town of Añón de Moncayo, about 70 kilometers west of the city of Zaragoza in Aragon. Around 1,500 people had to leave their homes there over the weekend. The fire is not yet under control and has so far destroyed about 8,000 hectares. In the case of a fire near Murcia in the south, which is said to have been triggered by lightning, the situation eased somewhat, as RTVE reported.
According to this information, the most devastating forest fire since the beginning of the year in Spain near Zamora around 270 kilometers northwest of Madrid near the border with Portugal was brought under control at the weekend. Since July 17, the fire has destroyed 31,500 hectares of forest and scrubland in the autonomous community of Castile and León.
In combination with a drought that has lasted for months and great heat, which experts attribute to climate change, as well as very dry air, new fires are breaking out again and again. The forest fire risk is still “extremely high” in parts of Andalusia, Aragon and Catalonia, warned the EU’s Copernicus forest fire information system on Twitter.
2022 is already the most devastating forest fire year for Spain since records began. Since January, more than 380 forest fires have destroyed an area about the size of Saarland./ro/DP/men