A firefighting helicopter battles a wildfire near Valverde del Camino in the Spanish southwestern province of Huelva, Monday. (AFP-Yonhap)
VALVERDE DEL CAMINO, Spain (AFP) — Firefighters struggled Monday to control a rapidly expanding wildfire in southwestern Spain that has forced the evacuation of around 800 people due to shifting winds and difficult terrain, officials said.
More than 600 firefighters backed by 26 water-dropping aircraft battled the blaze which broke out Thursday in the Andalusian province of Huelva, said the region’s minister for emergencies, Antonio Sanz.
“We are facing an extremely difficult, complex and dangerous wildfire, with the weather conditions continuing to offer us no respite. It is a long-distance race full of obstacles,” he said, warning the fire would not be contained “any time soon.”
Sanz said the fire had been particularly difficult to tackle because the intense heat was generating powerful upward currents of hot air and smoke, known as convective activity.
These currents can carry burning embers high into the air and cause new fires to break out several kilometres away, making the fire’s behavior extremely difficult to predict.
Firefighting personnel have had to be airlifted to safety after becoming trapped or facing serious danger, Sanz said.
Officials on Monday ordered the evacuation of the municipality of El Madrono, which has a population of around 300 people, bringing the total number of evacuees to about 800.
“People are very tired, very distressed, there is a lot of uncertainty and it’s starting to take its toll,” Eva Maria Velez, a 49-year-old school director, told Agence France-Presse at a shelter set up in a theatre in the town of Zalamea la Real.
More than 20,000 hectares of land are currently enclosed by the fire, but authorities stressed this figure refers to the area contained within the fire line and does not mean all of it has burned.
Spain is enduring a tough summer for wildfires, with around three dozen blazes having forced the evacuation of tens of thousands of people, especially in the center of the country.
One that raged in July in the Avila region near Madrid was considered the biggest Spain had seen in recent history, laying waste to some 50,000 hectares.
Early in July, another sweeping blaze caused 14 deaths in Almeria province in Andalusia.
Europe has suffered a succession of heat waves and droughts this year, which scientists say have been aggravated by human-generated climate change.