Over 100 fires were burning on Wednesday in Galicia, northern Spain, an official said, as police investigated claims, including from the minister of environment, that arsonists had been at work.
Sixty-seven of the 110 fires were out of control, according to a local government spokesperson, who said firefighters had spent the night trying to prevent the flames from spreading to homes.
There was no official figure for the area consumed by the fires, which have already killed three people, but the vice-president of the regional government, Anxo Quintana, told Cadena Sur radio on Tuesday evening that more than 10 000ha had been affected.
More than 1 200 soldiers have been sent to the region to help coordinate evacuations and to discourage arsonists, while more than 30 firefighting planes and several thousand firefighters battled the blazes.
The Spanish government has also requested firefighting equipment from its European Union partners to help put out blazes in the western Galicia region, the European Commission said on Wednesday.
Madrid sent the request to the commission early on Wednesday seeking three Canadair firefighting airplanes, five helicopters equipped with special water buckets and 20 fire trucks, a spokesperson for the EU executive said.
Under an EU civil-protection programme, the commission manages requests for help with a natural disaster and keeps tabs on what resources are available in which member state.
Although Galicia suffers from massive forest fires each year, the regional government said on Wednesday that this year’s destruction was ”unprecedented”.
Investigators specialising in organised crime are looking into what Spanish Minister of Environment Christina Narbona has called a ”wave of arson”.
”The situation has worsened despite an increase in resources” to fight the fires, the minister said on Wednesday on Cadena Sur.
Five suspected arsonists have been arrested since Monday, one of whom has since been released.
Meanwhile, the death of a 61-year-old farmer in Cordoba, southern Spain, brought the national number of heatwave victims this summer to 16, the regional health ministry said.
Over the border in Portugal, which has also seen high temperatures and a wave of fires since last week, about 600 firefighters battled eight blazes on Wednesday, according to the latest official statement.
Most were deployed in the Ossa mountains, in the district of Evora, southern Portugal, where the situation was under control despite the resurgence of a fire overnight on Tuesday that had been reported contained.
About 20 elderly people and children were evacuated.
”We’re doing what’s necessary to save people’s lives and their belongings,” said Fernanda Ramos, civil governor of Evora, to Lusa news agency, adding that no homes had burned yet.
More than 220 firefighters were working with around 60 fire engines, a helicopter and an airplane to battle the new outbreak, which has already damaged about 4 000ha of eucalyptus forests.
Seven other significant fires have been recorded in the north and centre of Portugal.
Portugal said it would send about 60 firefighters and 19 fire trucks to Galicia to help with efforts there.
”We have a duty of solidarity with Spain, which we have often helped,” said Interior Minister Antonio Costa on Tuesday during a visit to an emergency operations centre, in comments published in the daily, Publico, on Wednesday.
The group of firefighters is due to work over a period of seven days.
Spanish authorities had asked for air assistance, but Portugal said that, given its own problems with fires, it could not relinquish any aircraft.
Meanwhile, a violent fire started on Tuesday evening in an illegal rubbish dump in Greece, in the Corinth region, west of Athens, damaging several hundred hectares of forest and arable land, firefighters said on Wednesday.
About 300ha have already been burned and three villages were evacuated overnight as a precaution, said Prokopis Byzas, deputy mayor of Evrostinis, where the fire broke out. — AFP
