(Madrid) The fire, which has ravaged around 12,000 hectares in Extremadura, in western Spain, since Thursday, was stabilized on Saturday and some of the 700 evacuated residents will be able to return home, authorities announced. regional.
The region’s forest fire prevention and control service “declared the Las Hurdes fire as stabilized,” said the government of this Spanish region.
“The situation of the Pinofranqueado forest fire is better than yesterday and the weather evolution can help as the hours pass”, added on social networks the president of the region, Guillermo Fernandez Vara.
Data obtained via the European Copernicus satellite, an area of nearly 12,000 hectares has burned, more than the estimates of regional authorities evaluating the area affected at 8,500 hectares.
In the morning, civil protection coordinator Nieves Villar was encouraging during a press conference, noting that there was little wind in the area and a lot of people and means implemented to circumscribe the ‘fire.
The firefighters from Portugal joined their Spanish colleagues, the coordinator explained, pointing out that there were “more than 600 participants”.
While summer, the season for forest fires, has not yet arrived, Spain has already suffered several, after being the most affected country in Europe in 2022, with nearly 500 fires that have devoured more than 300,000 hectares, according to the European Forest Fire Information System (EFFIS).
A European country on the front line in the face of climate change, Spain has been experiencing an increase in heat waves for several years, with increasingly rare and irregular rainfall.
The first quarter of this year was the “driest” since records began in 1961, according to the National Meteorological Agency.
In addition to the pronounced lack of precipitation, a very early wave of extreme temperatures was added at the end of April, which reached an absolute record for the month of April in mainland Spain of 38.8 ° C, a level more characteristic of months summer like July or August.