Forest fires rage out of control near Benidorm, with almost 200 people evacuated due to ‘abnormally hot’ weather in April
- The fire started on Sunday near Tarbena in the eastern Valencia region
A forest fire that started in abnormally high temperatures has destroyed more than 1,235 hectares of land near Benidorm, eastern Spain, and forced 180 people to flee their homes, officials said Monday.
The fire started on Sunday near Tarbena in the Valencia region, when temperatures reached 30 degrees Celsius, unusually high for the season.
Heat, wind and low humidity fueled the blaze, which according to media reports may have started as an agricultural fire.
“The fire is still active” after a “complicated” night for firefighters, the region’s emergency services wrote on X, formerly Twitter.
They said the fire had destroyed “more than 500 hectares of land.”
A forest fire that started in abnormally high temperatures has destroyed more than 1,235 hectares of land near Benidorm, eastern Spain (pictured) and forced 180 people to flee their homes, officials said on Monday.
The fire started on Sunday near Tarbena in the Valencia region, when temperatures reached 30 degrees Celsius, unusually high for the season
On Monday, a helicopter was busy extinguishing fires in eastern Spain
A helicopter is filled with water from a swimming pool as crews work to fight the fire
A Spanish firefighting helicopter is seen during a forest fire that broke out in the town of Tarbena, Alicante, eastern Spain, April 15, 2024
“Around 180 people have been evacuated” from the two worst-hit areas, Pilar Bernabe, representative of the central government in Valencia, told public television.
Eight air units fought the fire together with firefighters and troops from the UME military emergency unit, which is called in to assist with larger fires.
Temperatures rose above 30 degrees Celsius in more than 65 areas across Spain on Saturday, including places as far north as the Pyrenees, Galicia and the Castilla y León region, according to national weather service AEMET.
Tarbena is located about 12 miles offshore and about 10 miles north of the coastal town of Benidorm, popular with British tourists.
In 2022, some 500 forest fires destroyed more than 300,000 hectares of land in Spain, a record in Europe, according to the European Forest Fire Information System (EFFIS).