The Almeria fire leaves 12 dead, 23 people unaccounted for and 6,600 hectares burned
The fire continues active, but today "a window of opportunity opens" to fight the fire
The Almeria fire has left 12 dead, 23 people missing, and 1448 evacuated. Furthermore, during the night, they had to expand the work area for the extinction of the fire because there were "very significant advances" of the flames in the territory, which raised the burned area to 6,600 hectares. This was concluded this Saturday during a press conference by Antonio Sanz, counselor of the Presidency, Health, and Emergencies of the Junta de Andalucía.
Although Sanz celebrated that the number of deaths has not increased in the last few hours, he acknowledged that up to 7 official missing person reports are already registered.
Regarding the state of the fire, it remains active, but, according to sources from the Infoca Plan of the Junta de Andalucía against fires, it has evolved "relatively well" during the night. However, Sanz stressed that the fire is still of "great dimensions" and there is a lot of work to be done to contain the advance of the flames.
Forecasts
Early in the morning, the heads of the Junta's fire extinction operation carried out a flight to assess the situation of the fire and continue with the extinction tasks.
Sanz wanted to emphasize that, for the first time since the start of the fire, a "window of opportunity" has opened in the weather. "We have very weak wind —2 km/h— and relative humidity around 50%", he stressed. "Until now we have been working on defense to prevent the advance of the flanks, but this is the first day we will be able to work on attacking the fire", he insisted.
The controversy over ES-ALERT
Sanz has also responded to criticism about the alerts. "Whoever criticizes ES-ALERT doesn't have a clue how it works," he stated. As the president of the Junta de Andalucía, Juanma Moreno, assured at the time, the minister pointed out that messages through ES-ALERT would have conveyed "confusing messages" to the population that would have done "even more harm," as those affected had to follow different recommendations in each situation.
Furthermore, Sanz stressed that many communication poles fell during the fire, which caused many small urbanizations to become isolated. "The information was conveyed in the best way possible, and that's why it was done verbally to each neighbor and from town to town, especially in the smaller places," he reiterated.