hundreds that firefighters<\/a> across Europe have been battling this summer amid record high temperatures along the Mediterranean and elsewhere.<\/p>\nBarely 150 kilometers (93 miles) away on the Costa Dorada, flash floods trapped people in cars, toppled walls and forced the evacuation of a campsite.<\/p>\n
What do we know about the fire?<\/p>\n
The fire is burning close to Gatova, an inland village with a population of 450, northwest of Valencia.<\/p>\n
TV footage showed the flames were moving close to built-up areas.<\/p>\n
Spain’s Military Emergency Unit UME posted a video to X showing its firefighters working in the darkness to douse the flames.<\/p>\n
Several firefighting helicopters and aircraft were also deployed.<\/p>\n
Local media reported that the blaze is thought to have been started by a lightning strike late Thursday.<\/p>\n
By Friday evening, more than 400 hectares of land had been burnt.<\/p>\n
Juan Carlos Valderrama, Valencia autonomous community’s civil protection minister, said buses were on standby to help residents without their own vehicles to leave their homes.<\/p>\n
What’s the latest on the floods?<\/p>\n
Further north, along Spain’s Costa Dorada, heavy rain overnight flooded streets and caused the collapse of two walls, injuring at least seven people, officials said.<\/p>\n
According to local media, roads in the coastal towns El Vendrell, Coma-ruga and Torredembarra in the Cataloniaregion were partially submerged.<\/p>\n
The Meteorological Service of Catalonia said several towns recorded nearly 200 liters per square meter in just a few hours.<\/p>\n
On Saturday morning, the agency warned of more heavy rainfall for the coastal region.<\/p>\n
Local media reported that several people got trapped in their vehicles during the flooding.<\/p>\n
A regional emergency official said firefighters had carried out more than 200 missions to rescue people from vehicles and flooded buildings.<\/p>\n
Three people were injured when a wall collapsed at the port of Roda de Bera, about 75 kilometers (45 miles) southwest of Barcelona, emergency services said.<\/p>\n
Another wall collapse at a nearby campsite injured two others.<\/p>\n
Around 300 people staying at the campsite were evacuated, with many sheltering at a nearby sports center, officials said.<\/p>\n
Don’t let the algorithm hide the news. If you rely on our team for trusted reporting, please take a moment to select us as your Preferred Source on Google by clicking here and hitting the “star” or “preferred” button, so you’ll always see our verified news first.<\/p>\n
Edited by: Sean Sinico<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A forest fire in eastern Spain sparked the evacuation of around 1,000 people on Saturday, authorities said. The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":74252,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[28542,28466,28543,17,20849],"class_list":["post-74251","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-spain","tag-costa-dorada","tag-flash-floods","tag-local-media","tag-spain","tag-ume"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74251","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=74251"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74251\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/74252"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=74251"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=74251"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=74251"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}