Spain Someone deliberately set the slopes of the Sunshine Coast on a rampage that “progressed like a bomb”: Was it meant to get the attention off the drug cargo coming from the sea?

Genalguacil / Jubrique

Sheep have disappeared. They are not included, even if self-sufficient Juan Caballero rumored in the mountains in the province of Málaga in southern Spain.

Caller ID sounds like this: “Prrrrrt, uoorrrt!” The r-sound should be emphasized in the shouts, Caballero advises.

We stand at an altitude of about 700 meters on a path like a path. We are surrounded by a charred forest. The tree trunks also stick out as spikes on the opposite slopes of Mount Bermeja, which belongs to the Ronda Mountains.

In these, the sheep of the main Andalusian farmer grazed until a deliberately set fire in the area of ​​the municipality of Genalguacil got out of control in September.

The fire front progressed furiously, and the fire is considered one of the worst in recent Spanish history.

Flames licked the historic white villages scattered on the slopes and spread across the ridge of the mountain, to the side of the Mediterranean and the Sunshine Coast. There, the fire threatened the usual dwellings of Estepona and Benahavis, the luxury villas of the foreign villagers and the resorts.

Juan Caballero and his son did not have time to secure a herd of 140 adult sheep. Of the animals scattered in the mountains, 68 and a dozen lambs are still missing.

“I’ve been here a couple of times a week looking for and rumoring. I haven’t lost hope, ”Caballero says next to his flatbed SUV.

WORST the nightmare with its evacuations was over in a week – thanks to the night rain that appeared to help a thousand firefighters and helicopters and small planes bombing water cargoes. But sparks still ran under the soil. The fire on September 8 was not finally quenched until 46 days later.

Firefighting work in difficult conditions cost an experienced 44-year-old firefighter. The flames took in nearly 10,000 hectares of natural pine forest and chestnut and cork groves. The fire also damaged protected and rare Spanish plovers, not to mention wildlife.

Now clearing is underway for the top ten months. Forest technicians are leading a crisis operation, in which obstacles to landslides are being built in the deforested terrain. It has rained less in the mountains than before, but at one time water can come so furiously that the land masses set in motion and the rivers flood suddenly.

Aftermath has also begun.

According to the villagers, the disaster once again showed how the Spanish countryside is struggling against oblivion and neglect. One of the most popular holiday oaks in the world, the Costa del Sol, is within easy reach, but in the small hinterlands of Andalusia, the population is declining and livelihoods are tight.

“We live in the Mediterranean, where the forest burns naturally. We smallholders conscientiously treat our lands as required by law. The fire made its worst mark in the forests of the Autonomous Community of Andalusia. EU funds are also allocated for their management, but the forests have been left to their own devices for years, ”says Juan Caballero, who owns olive and locust groves with his brother.

Our lookout shows how cars zigzag the road to the Sunshine Coast. Black-and-white patches around the road spoke of the two places where the arsonist, police said, struck.

CRIMINAL INVESTIGATIONS proceed in secret. Locals are wondering if there was a pyromaniac.

The lines of investigation also weigh in on drug trafficking criminal organizations. The main routes for cocaine and hashish smuggled into Europe are circulated nearby.

Gibraltar and Africa flock to the slopes of Mount Bermeja, and the great port of Algeciras is no more than fifty kilometers away. Coming could have been such a valuable drug that criminals wanted to distract authorities elsewhere. This has happened in the past.

Or perhaps the fire is linked to cannabis plantations that have been exposed in the mountain ear. The National Guard recently arrested 800 hemp plants from the cluster of a Spanish-Albanian armed group. A couple of hundred plants were seized in connection with a wildfire in the Genale Valley in May.

Jubriquen outside the white village, in turn, flared about five hundred acres in July. The people of Palokunta found a hiding place for 700 hemp plants in the caches of the rocks.

“The drug growers had tuned an engine into the pool that was pumping irrigation water for a mile. The fire was ignited by an engine spark, ”Jubrique, mayor Alberto Jesús Benítez says.

The culprits of the subsequent major fire are not yet known, and Benítez will not speculate. The mayor, on the other hand, has a solid view of the causes that contributed to the devastation. The leaders of the Autonomous Community of Andalusia will not receive forgiveness from him either.

“The forest management area of ​​Andalusia in the mountains was practically abandoned. The pine groves grew too dense, and the bottom vegetation rampanted, ”the mayor describes.

Add to this the rugged terrain of the Ronda Mountains with its cliffs and canyons and exceptionally scarce rainfall, the ingredients of the disaster were piled up, he says.

“The thick dry rye was gunpowder for the flames.”

Benitez, 29, is a nurse by profession. Jubrique has lost the most of the municipalities in the Málaga region as young people apply for jobs on the coast.

Benítez has conducted an interview with a town hall under renovation in a maze-built Moorish village. The opposite mountainside behind the windows looks like a work of art with chestnut trees shining in the colors of autumn.

“The trees were saved from the fire because the owners have taken care of the premises as they should.”

Chestnut production is an important industry in the region. Jubrique is strict about conservation measures.

As many as half of Spain’s municipalities are located in areas with a high risk of forest fires. Still, only a third of the municipalities have ensured that the statutory fire prevention plan is in place, El País says. It is the responsibility of the Autonomous Communities to ensure that their municipalities comply with the plan.

SPAIN management of Infocan’s forest fire brigade rated An exceptional, most dangerous, sixth-degree fire in the giant reeds of Mount Bermeja. It would be estimated to be an important area of ​​research for meteorologists, for example.

In such mega-storms, it is impossible to fight the flames by conventional means, as they form enormous pyrocumulus-fire clouds.

The first fire of the same class in the Pyrenees will be considered to have consumed 44,000 hectares of flame hell in Portugal in 2017.

Alberto Jesús Benítez followed the progress of the fire with growing concern.

“The fire broke out on Wednesday and was still very far from us on Thursday. It was formed on Friday pyrocumulus-fire cloud. The sight was amazing. On Saturday, the cloud spread horizontally and felt like it was raining. The fire went like a bomb. ”

From five in the morning Benítez and auxiliaries began knocking on doors and calling residents to evacuate the village. Jubrique, along with five other mountain villages, were evacuated for varying lengths of time.

“We all cried. Some seniors feared they would not be able to return home. Some would not have wanted to go to safety, ”says the person in charge of population affairs Marta Calvente In the village of Genalguacil.

The whole of Spain testified to the mayor of Genalguacil Miguel Ángel Herreran tears in live television interviews. The villagers believe that Herrera’s emotional appeals and courage saved the village in part. He guided firefighters from foreign areas in critical smoke during critical moments.

Herrera thinks there would be no talk of a Category 6 fire now if adequate help had been obtained immediately after the alarm. Help came, of course, but too little at first, he argues.

“We who have always lived here know from experience when the worst is the case,” he says in a museum village known for its street art. A similar violent fire flared up in the mountains in 1995.

Herreran according to the Andalusian leadership, it was not until the fire jumped to the side of the Costa del Sol. For example, part-time residents of the Malaga region in tightly protected closed communities include Bill Gates and, according to an unconfirmed assessment, also the President of Russia Vladimir Putin.

“Our village, the Genal Valley and the mountainous nature, was left unprotected while there was a bigger concern about not being able to get up to the hotels, golf courses and houses of the rich,” Herrera says with anger.

“Everyone has the right to protection but not at our expense.”