‘Arsonists’ blamed as raging wildfires leave two dead
AT LEAST two people have been killed in a spate of fierce wildfires in northwestern Spain that were last night threatening to rampage through towns and cities across the region of Galicia.
The vast majority of the blazes active in Galicia were believed to be have been started deliberately. The president of Galicia, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, condemned what he described as the “murderous” acts of “fire starters”.
After a weekend in which more than a hundred fires were started in the region and fanned by strong winds from Hurricane Ophelia, the city of Vigo was under siege as fires began to burn buildings, leading to hundreds being evacuated.
Images on social networks appeared to show the blaze close to Vigo’s city centre. The bodies of the two victims, so far not identified, were found by firemen inside a van that had been travelling along a road through blazing woods in the Nigrán area of Pontevedra province.
In Vigo, residents with buckets joined police and firefighters in the streets to fight blazes as they spread through the city of 300,000 inhabitants. The city’s university area was threatened by flames and a student residence had been evacuated. Vigo’s Peugeot-citroën factory was also evacuated as a precaution. Vigo’s mayor, Abel Caballero, said that three hotels and a sports stadium were being prepared as emergency shelters on what he called “a horrible night”.
At least 17 fires remained out of control in Galicia, with 11 of these considered to pose danger to inhabited areas leading to evacuations.
Meanwhile, the death toll from wildfires in California passed 40 at the weekend, as shifting winds forced authorities to order the evacuation of thousands more people amid the most lethal outbreak of bush fires in the state’s history.
More than 100,000 people have been forced to flee their homes and hundreds of others have been reported missing since fires erupted a week ago.