The firefighters have stabilized the fire that has been burning since Friday in Portbou and Colera after half past nine on Saturday night, after allowing four Surveillance and Attack Aircraft (AVA) to act in the afternoon. the Generalitat and the Ministry of Ecological Transition. The coordinated action has allowed the discharge of some 3,000 liters of water and retarder in each plane pass and has been key to deactivating the active fronts of the fire, while waiting for it to be fully controlled and put out. The Catalan Minister of the Interior, Joan Ignasi Elena, highlighted a few hours before the stabilization that the intervention of these air units “has helped and made things much easier”.
The fire, which broke out on Friday afternoon on a forest track between Portbou and the town’s reservoir, at the height of Mas del Molí, has devastated 573 hectares of forest area until Saturday evening, most of them in the neighboring town of Colera. The strong tramontana wind that blows in the area makes extinction tasks difficult. The towns of Portbou and Colera and three urbanizations of Llançà have been confined from Friday until 7:30 p.m. on Saturday. Also at that time, the restrictions on the N-260 highway, which connects Spain with France and which was cut off in Llançà, as well as the rail service between Figueres and the French border, have been partially lifted. Some 270 people who were passing through the three affected towns had to be housed in municipal premises. In addition, 4,000 subscribers have remained without electricity for a few hours due to the affectation of a medium voltage line. In Portbou, without drinking water or internet, the situation has worsened and the help of tanker trucks has been necessary.
Throughout the day some 280 firefighters from the Generalitat, 5 bomber helicopters and 2 coordination helicopters have been working on extinguishing tasks and in the middle of the afternoon, with the descent of the tramontana, it has been achieved that for the first time since the declaration of the fire they could carry out water discharges the AVAs.
Regarding the causes of the fire, the Chief Inspector of the Rural Agents, Josep Antoni Mur, explained that on Friday afternoon they located the exact point where it started and began to try to determine the cause. “We can point out that it has not been due to natural or electrical causes, from here any cause that may be related to human activity is open; It is an area that has a certain amount of frequentation and has a certain circulation of people, but we cannot specify more,” Mur said.
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The Chief of Intervention of the Girona Fire Brigade, Jordi Martín, explained that they have focused on two aspects, the protection of the population, “because the fire was active reaching the houses of Cala Rovallada in Colera and in Portbou between the station and the first houses in the south”, and in attacking the right flank, “which is the one that worries us the most because its opening would make the fire grow not only on the surface, with some 2,700 hectares, but also with possible affectation in the population, in urbanizations north of Llançà.
The emergency personnel, who found their extinction work difficult due to the strong wind that created dozens of secondary sources far from the main flames, took advantage of the drop in intensity to strengthen aerial resources. “We have woken up with gusts of about 100 kilometers per hour and this Saturday afternoon we have taken advantage of the fact that we have been at 30-40km/h per hour to boost air resources, since it will increase at night and reach its maximum. the night from Sunday to Monday”, explained Martín. For his part, the Director General of Prevention, Fire Fighting and Rescue, Joan Delort, explained that they had been in permanent coordination with the Ministry, and that they had been asked for air resources, in case circumstances allowed their action.
Martín was “satisfied” with the work done on Saturday and stressed that the day had started with a largely uncontrolled perimeter. “The evolution of the tasks carried out this Saturday have been favorable and we can have good conditions to enter the stabilization phase. Throughout the afternoon we were able to not only make the perimeter cold, but also secure it, with discharges of retardants”. In addition, he has highlighted that the opening of roads would be made with mobility restrictions from Llançà to the border and also in the perimeter of the fire, and that they would be extended until “in the next few days it can be controlled and extinguished”.
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