Spain wildfire forces more evacuations

MADRID: A wildfire that officials suspect was started deliberately forced the evacuation of a third town in western Spain yesterday, officials said.

Firefighters evacuated about 1,000 people from the town of Hoyos in the early hours of Saturday, a day after another 1,400 people were ordered to leave their homes and campsites in two other nearby towns.

“The wind fanned the flames and caused the fire to spread, forcing the evacuation of Hoyos due to the proximity of the blaze and especially the smoke,” local Red Cross official Jose Lopez Santana told Spanish public radio.

The blaze, which broke out in the Sierra de Gata mountain range amid scorching temperatures on Thursday, has burned over 6,000 hectares of land.

About 300 firefighters and other emergency crew members worked overnight to battle the blaze, the government of the Extremadura region said in a statement.

Firefighters took residents of a retirement home in Hoyos to a hospital in the nearby town of Coria, the statement added.

“For families it is very hard not being able to remain at home but saving lives must be our top priority,” the head of the regional government, Guillermo

For families it is very hard not being able to remain at home but saving lives must be our top priority. When a fire is concentrated in a very specific area it is because the hand of man must have played some kind of a role, because it is not hotter and drier in the Sierra de Gata than in the rest of Extremadura — Guillermo Fernandez Vara, head of the regional government

Fernandez Vara, told reporters.

The cause of the fire was still undetermined but “everything seems to indicate” that arson was to blame, he added.

“When a fire is concentrated in a very specific area it is because the hand of man must have played some kind of a role, because it is not hotter and drier in the Sierra de Gata than in the rest of Extremadura,” he said. — AFP