A devastating fast-moving wildfire that broke out in southern Spain’s Almería province has claimed at least 12 lives, with 23 people still unaccounted for as hundreds of emergency responders battled desperately to contain the blaze on Friday.
According to regional officials, the inferno ignited on Thursday afternoon in the Los Gallardos municipality when a falling electricity pole fell across wooded terrain, igniting dry vegetation that allowed the flames to spread at extraordinary speed. Eyewitnesses and local leaders alike have drawn parallels between the destruction and the impact of a bomb blast, describing a scene of apocalyptic devastation across the affected area.
For many holidaymakers who had just arrived in the popular coastal region for a summer break, the disaster unfolded in mere minutes. British tourist Lucinda Curtois had landed in Spain with her partner Riyaz Cheytan and their teenage children earlier that same Thursday, and the family was relaxing in a swimming pool in nearby Bédar just hours after their arrival when local residents knocked to warn them of an immediate evacuation order.
Curtois recalled that the transition from a faint wisp of haze to towering plumes of black smoke and advancing open flames took only 15 minutes. “It was really frightening and unbelievably quick,” she told the BBC. The family grabbed only a single change of clothes, piled into their car, and fled toward the nearest main road. When they rounded a corner, they found the route already blocked by advancing flames and a mass evacuation of other local visitors, forcing them to backtrack and find an alternate escape route. Cheytan described a massive mushroom-shaped cloud of smoke billowing over the landscape, matching other witnesses’ comparisons to an explosion. The family eventually reached safety at a hotel 30 minutes inland, but they reported that close friends who chose to evacuate on foot remain among the missing.
Another British expat staying in nearby Mojacar, Peter Chapman, told reporters he initially mistook the darkening sky for an incoming summer storm, until he caught the acrid scent of smoke and spotted a menacing orange glow on the horizon. The surreal scene reminded him of his mother’s accounts of German bombing raids on London during World War II, he said. Chapman and his wife chose to shelter in place at their holiday home, waking on Friday to find their property coated in a thick layer of ash. On local community forums, he added, residents have been sharing frantic requests for information about friends and relatives who have not been heard from since the fire broke out. “It’s just terrible,” he said.
Even for residents who managed to evacuate safely, the disaster has left irreversible personal and economic loss. Los Gallardos local Jose Antonio Flores told Reuters he watched the fire consume a plot of land he had tended for nearly 40 years, where he raised his son and planted 600 orange trees that fed his family and supported his livelihood. “It rips your soul out,” he said of the loss.
As of Friday, more than 500 emergency responders including firefighters, military personnel, and law enforcement officers were deployed to the fire line, supported by 30 aerial firefighting aircraft working to slow the blaze’s spread and contain it before it can reach more populated areas. Los Gallardos mayor Francisco Miguel Reyes called the blaze unprecedented for the region, telling Spanish broadcaster Cadena SER that the scale of destruction is almost impossible to process. “This is the first time we’ve faced a fire as devastating as this,” he said. “It feels like a bomb has fallen on the area. When I think about how everything was before the fire started and see how it is now, it’s breathtaking.”