Tragedy in Almeria: at least 12 dead and 23 missing due to a large-scale fire

Almeria has been experiencing one of the worst fire tragedies in the State since this Thursday. Twelve people have died and twenty-three remain missing due to a serious forest fire in Los Gallardos, which has burned nearly 4,000 hectares. A figure to which at least eight injured must be added, four of whom are serious and hospitalized for burns. Data that makes it the third deadliest forest fire recorded in Spain, for now behind that of Lloret de Mar in 1979 and that of La Gomera in 1984.

The fire originated on Thursday evening due to the fall of an electricity cable from a private network that would have ignited vegetation and, driven by strong winds, would have spread with extreme speed towards the surrounding forest mass. From here, as explained this Friday by the president of the Junta de Andalucía, Juanma Moreno, the fire created a "kind of rat trap" that claimed the lives of at least twelve people from the town of Bédar.

Pending definitive identification, initial information suggests the victims were foreigners. The Andalusian Minister of Presidency, Health, and Emergencies, Antonio Sanz, explained that the flames caught four of the victims inside their cars, and indicated that they believe they are British because the steering wheel was on the right. In the case of the rest of the victims, they would also be foreigners –Belgian or British–, and would have diverted through improvised routes in the dense smoke. Apparently, "they were walking" and "looking for an exit" that "was not the one planned" by the emergency teams.

The mayor of this municipality of fewer than 1,000 inhabitants, Ángel Collados, recounted the events this morning. As he explained, from the first moment, councilors from the City Council and local police officers fanned out across the area to warn "neighbors door to door." In some cases, however, they found people who, despite calls to take refuge inside buildings, decided to abandon their homes. Among the neighbors who did not heed the instructions, he said, was the group of eight fatalities.

Júlia is one of the residents of Bédar who was evacuated. In statements to Efe, she explained that many of the affected homes are isolated in the mountains, and added that some neighbors were surprised by the fire while fleeing. "They saw the flames and wanted to flee. Some took alternative roads... Entire families died carbonized inside the car," she lamented.

Antonio Sanz has admitted that it is an "unprecedented tragedy" in Andalusia. At the moment, the burnt surface is already around 4,000 hectares. The Andalusian minister has made an explicit call for calm and to avoid unilateral evacuation decisions, and has insisted to residents on the need not to take paths or escape routes that have not been coordinated and authorized by the emergency services. The Minister of the Interior, Fernando Grande-Marlaska, has also called for following the authorities' instructions.

Without ES-Alert

Regarding the management of the first hours of the fire, Juanma Moreno explained that the emergency management considered that sending an ES-Alert message to citizens' mobile phones "could have generated confusion among those affected who had to follow different recommendations in each situation". "There were cases where they had to be confined, and others where they had to leave. And not even the routes were the same," he stressed. Moreno also remarked that ES-Alert does not have the same effectiveness in areas like the affected one where there is not enough mobile coverage, even more so considering that three base points of telephone connection had "fallen".

The first witnesses explain that the origin of the fire could be the fall of an electric cable that would have ignited the vegetation in Los Gallardos, a small municipality in the north of the province. The strong wind would have spread the flames with extreme speed towards the surrounding forest mass. However, through its profile on X, Endesa has explained that its technicians have confirmed that the cable was not its property, is not part of the distribution network, and, moreover, had no voltage.

The fire forces residents to evacuate

A total of 1,150 people have had to be evacuated and two hundred have been relocated to different shelters and provisional centers such as the Lubrín theater, a sports center in Garrucha, and also a convent in Antas. Due to this large-scale fire, residents of Almocáizar, Fuente del Albarico, Los Pinos, La Serena, el Pinar de Bédar, and the Miraflores tourist complex have also been evacuated.

Regarding the fire situation, it is complex: "It is a fire with a lot of ravine, where machinery could not enter and there are no access areas. The topography is very bad," assured Sanz, who specified that the "right flank is the most worrying," as it is where the fire can end up in cultivated areas, and that the west flank is "very active" and work has not yet been able to start there.

The virulent fire affecting this area of Andalusia has forced the activation of the Military Emergencies Unit (UME), which is working there with 220 personnel and 70 vehicles. Added to these soldiers are 160 personnel from the Civil Guard with 52 vehicles, two helicopters and two drones, 4 amphibious aircraft and one helicopter from the Ministry of Ecological Transition and 34 personnel from Civil Protection. This joint macro-operation is working to control the flames, which are spreading very quickly and uncontrollably.

Given the magnitude of the events, the authorities are dismayed. King Felipe VI, the Spanish Prime Minister, Pedro Sánchez, and the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, have sent messages of support. The President of the Generalitat, Salvador Illa, also assured that he is "shocked" by the deaths in the fire and sent condolences to the victims' families: "Catalonia is with Andalusia in these difficult times," he published on X.