A huge forest fire in eastern Spain that already destroyed large tracts of land has reignited despite the rains and accelerated its advance during the night, the authorities reported this Friday.
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So far this year, Spain has suffered nearly 400 forest fires as a result of heat waves and the long periods of drought that have already devastated more than 283,000 hectares of land, more than triple the total area destroyed in 2021.
Over the past week, hundreds of firefighters have battled two large, out-of-control wildfires in the Valencia region in the east, helped by heavy rains that offered respite, almost completely extinguishing the flames.
And although the water put an end to the Vall d’Ebo fire, near Benidorm, the Bejís fire, located some 70 kilometers northwest of the city of Valencia, and which has already destroyed 19,000 hectares, reignited again and heads towards the natural park of the Sierra Calderona.
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The Bejís fire “has had a slow evolution during the night except (…) in the southeast part where it has had a more virulent behavior,” the 112 emergency services wrote on Twitter.
“There are flames in all sectors of the perimeter,” they added.
There are flames in all sectors of the perimeter
Firefighters from the Military Emergency Unit wrote on Twitter that it had been an “intense night” in Bejís, posting images of huge flames.
“It is a very large fire, there are more than 120 kilometers in perimeter, so we have used all the means we have to contain the fire,” Mariano Hernández, one of the provincial fire chiefs, told public television.
Another fire broke out early Friday in Olocau, inside the Sierra Calderona park, some 40 kilometers southeast of Bejís, emergency services said.
He added that “the preventive confinement of the population” was ordered.
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The Vall d’Ebo fire started on Saturday and the Bejís fire two days later, forcing the evacuation of some 3,000 people in total.
So far this year, Spain has suffered 391 forest fires, according to the latest figures from the European Forest Fire Information System (EFFIS).
The fires destroyed more than triple the area consumed by forest fires in the entire year 2021, which amounted to more than 84,000 hectares, according to these figures.
AFP
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