Flames are spreading across difficult terrain near a popular summer village, while emergency crews race to protect residents and contain the growing danger.<\/p>\n
In eastern Spain, a large wildfire has prompted the evacuation of approximately one thousand people. The fire broke out near the village of G\u00e1tova, not far from Valencia.<\/p>\n
Juan Carlos Valderrama, the civil protection minister of the Valencian autonomous community, said bus transport to safe locations had been arranged for municipal residents without their own vehicles.<\/p>\n
Wildfire near G\u00e1tova has spread across more than 400 hectares<\/p>\n
The blaze is believed to have started after a lightning strike late on Thursday evening. By Friday evening, the fire had spread across more than 400 hectares, and authorities had not yet managed to contain it.<\/p>\n
Firefighting efforts are being complicated by the difficult-to-access terrain. The UME military emergency unit, fire crews, and aircraft, including helicopters and planes, have been deployed to battle the blaze.<\/p>\n
RTVE reports that around 450 people live in G\u00e1tova permanently. During the summer, the village\u2019s population nearly doubles due to the arrival of holidaymakers.<\/p>\n
Wildfires in Spain: the consequences of heat and drought<\/p>\n
The European Forest Fire Information System, EFFIS, has recorded 425 wildfires in Spain since the beginning of the year. The fires have already destroyed more than 297,000 hectares.<\/p>\n
Prolonged drought and record-high temperatures are drying out vegetation, allowing flames to spread rapidly and making the work of emergency services considerably more difficult.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Flames are spreading across difficult terrain near a popular summer village, while emergency crews race to protect residents…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":74196,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[28533,28534,273,22054,28532,95,28535,24810],"class_list":["post-74195","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-valencia","tag-forest-fires-in-spain","tag-gatova-fire","tag-news","tag-spain-wildfire","tag-spain-wildfire-valencia-wildfire-gatova-fire-wildfire-evacuation-forest-fires-in-spain","tag-valencia","tag-valencia-wildfire","tag-wildfire-evacuation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74195","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=74195"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74195\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/74196"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=74195"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=74195"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=74195"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}