BARCELONA, Spain\u00a0\u2014\u00a0Spanish firefighter Javier Garc\u00eda never faced anything like the record blaze raging near Madrid in two decades protecting woodlands and rural communities.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis doesn\u2019t have a precedent,\u201d Garc\u00eda told the Associated Press by phone before another long day ahead.<\/p>\n
The out-of-control fire has consumed 193 square miles\u2014 an area five times the size of Barcelona \u2014 and forced 25,000 people to flee villages in the smoldering hills of \u00c1vila west of Madrid, the capital.<\/p>\n
The ferocity of Spain\u2019s largest recorded wildfire is forcing firefighters to fundamentally change their tactics, prioritizing evacuations and property protection because of the danger posed by fast-moving walls of flames and blazes too powerful to attack directly.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe evolution is alarming,\u201d Garc\u00eda said.<\/p>\n
Before, his brigade would tackle fires in the wilderness. Now they are a last line of defense, focused on saving lives. No deaths from these fires have been reported, while 79,000 people have fled their homes from the \u00c1vila fire, another fire nearby in the Madrid region and one in eastern Castell\u00f3n.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat gives us more work and more stress,\u201d Garc\u00eda said. \u201cNow it is lives first, then homes, and after, the forest.\u201d<\/p>\n
Climate change is fanning the flames<\/p>\n
Garc\u00eda works with one of Spain\u2019s emergency wildfire brigades, which deploy to help regional firefighters when they need it. They spend 12-hour shifts hosing down burning trees and hacking away at underbrush before it becomes fuel for the flames.<\/p>\n
His 40-man unit, based in \u00c1vila, has been working for three days on the \u00c1vila fire. Before that, they fought fires in Guadalajara and near Zaragoza in recent weeks. The Guadalajara fire consumed 123 square miles, making it Spain\u2019s third largest on record.<\/p>\n
\u201cUntil last year, I had never experienced fighting one big fire after another,\u201d the 43-year-old Garc\u00eda said.<\/p>\n
Large areas of Spain always have been fire-prone thanks to its hot summers and relatively dry climate. But experts and government officials say that climate change has increased the frequency of heat waves and periods of drought, extending periods of high risk for wildfires.<\/p>\n
Once one ignites, it grows at a speed and voracity rarely seen before.<\/p>\n
Garc\u00eda said there used to be around 15 days of extreme fire risk each year. Now firefighters are on alert for 30 to 40 days.<\/p>\n
Fires have burned 590 square miles this year in Spain \u2014 six times the area scorched by blazes in the first half of last year, said Sara Aagesen, the ecology minister.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, a monster fire in neighboring France has forced more than 200,000 people to flee their homes.<\/p>\n
Fires are too powerful to tackle head-on<\/p>\n
Ra\u00fal Guerrero, 29, has worked as a firefighter in Castilla y Le\u00f3n, the region including \u00c1vila, for the last decade. He said this fire can\u2019t compare with any he has battled.<\/p>\n
He told the AP that his 40-man unit has had to retreat to safer ground on several occasions when the danger of being trapped was imminent. He said the fire at several moments was \u201cbeyond the capacity of extinction,\u201d which, he said, means \u201cthe fire is so virulent and has such power that no matter what you do, you can\u2019t put it out.\u201d<\/p>\n
Asked how that makes him feel, Guerrero said, \u201cabove all, impotent.\u201d<\/p>\n
While fires often are started by lightning or a spark made by agricultural machinery, a decisive factor that makes wildfires harder to combat is the disappearance of the farms, orchards and local forestry industries that used to create buffer areas around villages and towns.<\/p>\n
Vegetation now grows right up to homes, Guerrero said. He called for property owners and local authorities to work all year in clearing brush away from homes and tending to forests.<\/p>\n
If not, Guerrero said, that vegetation will remain \u201cpure gunpowder\u201d for future fires.<\/p>\n
Wilson writes for the Associated Press. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BARCELONA, Spain\u00a0\u2014\u00a0Spanish firefighter Javier Garc\u00eda never faced anything like the record blaze raging near Madrid in two decades…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":62309,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[1168,24972,3144,22082,10815,5600,24973,24970,24971,82,24847,24974,17,24975,22926],"class_list":["post-62308","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-spain","tag-area","tag-avila-fire","tag-fire","tag-firefighter","tag-garcia","tag-home","tag-large-wildfire","tag-last-year","tag-long-day","tag-madrid","tag-raul-guerrero","tag-record-blaze","tag-spain","tag-spanish-firefighter","tag-square-mile"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62308","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=62308"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62308\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/62309"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=62308"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=62308"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=62308"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}