After a night of intense work, with hundreds of people trying to put out the fire, the Bejís fire “evolves favorably”, as announced by 112 early in the morning. “There is no flame in most of the perimeter. They have been working with a direct attack in the Andilla area, in ravines that are difficult to access, where there was a flame“, they explain from the Valencian emergency service.
The president of the Generalitat, Ximo Puig, in his morning appearance after the meeting with those responsible for the security device of the Advanced Command Post, has advanced that although the evolution is favorable, “there are hot spots in Andilla and El Toro”.
During the night, 9 units of Forest Firefighters from the Generalitat Valenciana were deployed, 9 fire engines ️, a volunteer brigade from Fuentes de Ayódar, ️ 8 firefighters from Castellón and ️ 146 members of the UME. Since dawn, ️12 aerial media have been incorporated from the Generalitat, 19 from the Government, two from the ️Plan INFOCAM of the Junta de Castilla la Mancha, 3 from the Catalan Generalitat and another three from the Government of Aragon.
The fires of Olocau, Petrer and Vall d’Ebo
As reported by 112 early this Saturday morning, the Olocau fire is progressing favorably, but it is still active. During the night, ️2 units of Forest Firefighters, ️2 fire engines, ️1 crew, a coordinator and 3 forestry brigades from the Valencia Provincial Firefighters Consortium worked.
The Petrer fire has been extinguished at 07:30 a.m. according to a communication from the Alicante Fire Department to the Generalitat Emergency Coordination Center.
With regard to the Vall d’Ebo fire, the perimeter continues to stabilize and the evolution is favourable. A perimeter with a thermal camera of the drone unit is planned. The operational staff is divided into two sectors and there have been no developments tonight. During the night, ️2 units of Forest Firefighters of the Generalitat, ️2 fire engines and ️20 fire crews from Alicante were deployed.
Throughout the night the 500 ground troops have continued to work, while the 40 air assets will rejoin first thing in the morning. This enormous human and technical effort controls 135 kilometers of perimeter, although the war report on Friday night spoke of three enclaves where the fire was still particularly virulent after yesterday’s dangerous outbreaks.
The first of them is near the El Toro military base, where the firefighters concentrated a large part of their efforts at night. The second is in Teresa, within the already burned area, which shows what specialists have been saying since day one: the temperature inside the fire is such that significant outbreaks can occur at any time. The third is in Andilla, where the fire besieges the town: this Friday night it was just three kilometers from the town center. The defense work against the fire had to be intensified from the first hour of Friday: although the humidity of the early morning helped reduce the intensity of the flames closest to the urban area, with the arrival of the day they regained strength.
We finished the fifth day of #IFBejís with a good taste in the mouth, but without lowering our guard and with the entire device working fully. The evolution today has been more positive but the fire is still active. Images of the fronts of El Toro and Cueva Santa. #We keep working 💪 pic.twitter.com/8yxCZqZuPU
Bombers Dipcas (@BombersDipcas) August 19, 2022
And it is that if the fight against fires were a war, and in a certain way it is, the tables would be beginning to change. Cautious optimism this Friday in Viver, where the Advanced Command Post (PMA) is located from which the fire extinction work in Bejís is controlled. It has been possible to prevent the flames from entering the Calderona or the Cueva Santa sanctuary, from which they have remained just 20 meters away. “It has been the first day in which the weather has allowed work to be done in a reasonable way, without changes in the wind, so the planned strategy has been carried out,” the president of the Generalitat, Ximo Puig, said this Friday before to ensure that the evolution “is favorable”, despite the fact that there are “moments of tension in some spaces”.
The war is long, but the battle could be being won. The stabilization of the Vall d’Ebo fire and the perimeter of the Olocau fire, caused in the early hours of Friday and already stabilized after putting fear into the body and burning some three hectares of the Sierra de la Calderona natural park, calls for optimism. Almost 32,000 hectares in total have burned, 20,000 in Castellón alone, but the ominous shadow of the Bejís pyrocumulus cloud that hangs over the Community could have the hours numbered.
The conditional in journalism is not recommended at all, but the truth is that, in this matter of fighting fire, nothing is certain. Even President Puig spoke this Friday of “trying to consolidate” the day’s work before the increase in temperatures and the entry of the wind, which after spending all day blowing from the south could change to the west in the early hours of this Saturday. “We have to consolidate the solution path, this Saturday will be more complicated,” warned the head of the Consell. “It is a very important night to attack the three sources that we have after the crosswinds. This Saturday the wind and the heat will not help”, Puig has indicated. This time, yes, it seems that the most decisive hours of the fight against what is about to be the second most serious fire in the history of the Region, because the one in Andilla in 2012 burned just over 22,000 hectares, lie ahead.
The town is still confined, like Alcublas, whose neighbors rebelled this Friday and managed to get them out of their houses now but not out of town. The almost 1,500 evicted people from Bejís, Teresa, Torás and Sacañet, as well as those from the districts of Andilla La Pobleta, Oset and Artaj, have not returned to their homes. This Saturday it is planned to study again if the neighbors can return to their homes, although Puig has assured that it is already being checked if the towns have basic electricity and water services, which again invites optimism. “The technical management of the fire has reported that tonight (for this Friday) that prudence must be maintained, but the will is that they do it as quickly as possible in some municipalities,” he said, after noting that this Saturday will decide in this regard. During Friday, the technicians traveled to towns such as Bejís to verify that the supply and electricity networks were still working.
Some of the neighbors, such as those from the towns of Alto Palancia, have not returned to their homes for four days, and they do not know how they are going to find them. More than 100 people are still in the Viver shelter, in the multifunctional pavilion, where they are cared for by Red Cross personnel and volunteers, who try to keep their spirits up, although the distance from their homes is beginning to weigh on them. So much so that there are those who have skipped the ban and have returned home. This was confirmed this Friday by the president of the Castellón Provincial Council, José Martí, “There are many clues and, unfortunately, some neighbors are skipping the ban and it would be unfortunate if the Civil Guard had to intervene more strongly,” he stressed. According to Martí, the agents of the armed institute are accompanying neighbors so that they agree with them to give food and water to their animals, both from livestock farms and domestic. As an example, the president of the Diputación de Castellón has said that in Torás, a neighbor who has canaries that have been champions in competitions «has been able to access to give them food and others».
In Viver, the Armed Institute has had to go to Ragudo, where some 200 people live in summer, to remove some neighbors who had returned home. In fact, a group of them has approached the WFP to ask why they are far from home if there is neither fire nor smoke in the district. Their evacuation could have more to do with the proximity of an aerodrome used by the aerial means of extinction than with the danger itself, although the mayor of Viver, Nieves Simón, has admitted that this Friday there were outbreaks “that were quickly controlled” . The Civil Guard itself has been in charge of explaining to the neighbors that they still could not return to their homes because their safety could not be guaranteed given the danger of the fire breaking out again.
The Benemérita has also been in charge of instructing delegations against a 57-year-old man who apparently threw the remains of a barbecue held in his home on the mountain as allegedly responsible for the forest fire that originated in the Sierra del Caballo in Petrer. The fire is still active after burning nearly 70 hectares in an area of vegetation included in the protected landscape of the Sierra del Maigmó and Sierra del Cid. The man is being investigated for a forest fire crime due to gross negligence. The proceedings instructed by the agents together with the means of proof collected will be sent by Seprona to the Court of Instruction of Elda, as reported by the armed institute in a statement.
The Civil Guard discovered that the fire started as a result of the remains of charcoal from a barbecue that had been held a few days earlier on a private estate located in the mountains. According to the account of the events provided by the Benemérita, one of the owners of the house removed the embers last Wednesday and threw them into the garden, believing that they were completely extinguished. However, due to the dryness of the scrub in the area and the weather, the remains were reactivated and burned throughout the mountain. The man has declared before the agents that, although he tried to stop the advance by pouring water on the flames with a hose, he did not succeed, for which he required the intervention of professionals and notified 112, as reported by Europa Press.
Good news
The Vall d’Ebo fire was considered stabilized this Friday after aerial reconnaissance of the area at 10 am. Previously, the units of the Military Emergency Unit (UME) had already withdrawn, and moved to the Bejís fire. Throughout the early hours of Friday, drones equipped with thermal cameras were used to determine the “hot zones”. The work continued throughout the day through aerial and ground surveillance, as well as cooling the perimeter by throwing water and removing the earth in order to prevent reproduction. According to the latest figures provided, the fire has burned 12,150 hectares and has affected a perimeter of 100 kilometers between the Comtat and Marina Alta regions.
The consequences of latent lightning after the storms at the beginning of the week were not only felt in the municipality of Olocau. Also in Vilafranca, in Castellón, where after six in the afternoon a column of smoke was detected that luckily did not go beyond the category of conatus. Firefighters from the Generalitat displaced to the area declared it extinguished shortly before nine o’clock. In relation to other fires that have affected the Community, both Calles and Les Useres, active since last weekend, were definitively extinguished on Friday, according to the Valencian Agency for Security and Emergency Response (AVSRE). ).
Topics
Ximo Puig, Red Cross, SUGC Unified Civil Guard Union, Andilla, Bejís, Castellón, El Toro, Petrer, Vall de Ebo, Firefighters, Forest fires, Heat wave
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