Almería (Spain).- At least 12 people have died and another 23 remain unaccounted for in the forest fire that has been affecting the Spanish southeast, in the Andalusian province of Almería, since last night, reported this Friday the president of the Regional Government of Andalusia (the autonomous government of that Spanish region), Juanma Moreno.
The fire, he explained, started in a ditch “due to a broken cable” in the power lines and grew, aided by winds of up to 50 kilometers per hour, so that the flames advanced up to 15 kilometers in just two hours.
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The president of the Andalusian government added that neighbors were notified “door-to-door,” recommending confinement in some cases and evacuation in others, although some of them “did not listen” and that is, predictably, what may have caused the high number of deaths.
At the moment, the flames have scorched 3,200 hectares in the area, where scrubland and esparto grass abound, which at this time of year is dry, acting as fuel for the fire, which Moreno has described as one of the fastest and most complex in recent years in Andalusia.
According to the local emergency management, which has highlighted the complexity of managing the fire on the ground, among the dead are at least four citizens of British origin trapped inside a vehicle and seven people who died while fleeing the flames.
The Minister of the Presidency of Andalusia, Antonio Sanz, warned that the diversion through improvised and uncoordinated routes amidst the smoke has aggravated this tragedy, after which he specified that all or most of the fatalities could be of foreign origin.
Flames and smoke have forced the preventive evacuation of numerous nearby population centers and some tourist complexes in a Mediterranean coastal area that is filled with visitors at this time of year, mostly foreigners.
The Almería fire is one of the many incidents affecting Spain and Portugal in recent weeks, exacerbated by the heat waves and high temperatures affecting both countries in the middle of the dog days of summer.
