Man describes harrowing escape from wildfire that killed wife and friends

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A British man caught up in Spanish wildfires has described how he survived the inferno as his wife and friends died trying to escape.

Malcolm Timbrell, 70, lived with his wife Annette Kilgore, 69, in the village of Bedar, in the Almeria province of southeast Spain. 

The area was scorched by wildfires on July 9 that killed 13 people, one of the deadliest fires in the country’s history. 

Timbrell spoke to CBS News’ partner network BBC News on Monday — outside his blackened, destroyed hillside home — about the ordeal.

“You’d never imagine it could happen,” he said, “and when it does, and you’re the only survivor, then you’re left in a situation of, ‘What can I do?'”

Timbrell and Kilgore moved to Spain after several years sailing together. Having both previously lost partners to terminal illness, they were together for 17 years.

They had hoped to spend the rest of their lives together in the southern Spanish hills of Andalusia.

“She was such a happy, outgoing person,” Timbrell said of Kilgore. “We have had an amazing life together — and now it’s stopped.”

The wildfire spread rapidly, fueled by sweltering temperatures, high winds and dry land, scorching an area larger than Manhattan and at times racing across the parched landscape at more than 300 feet per minute.

With the flames getting closer and closer to their home, Timbrell, Kilgore and their friends had to make a snap decision about how and when to flee.

They were going to try driving, but Timbrell quickly went back into their home to get the couple’s cats, Charlie and Lilly.

“If we’d have done the sensible thing and gone the other way and let our cats die, we both would be alive,” he told The BBC. “But when you’ve got animals, you don’t think like that.”

After grabbing Charlie and Lilly, Timbrell tried to rejoin the group, but saw that for some reason they had gotten out of their cars.

“My wife and our other seven friends and neighbors — against me screaming at them not to — decided the only safe way was to walk out in front of the firewall,” he said. “I’ve subsequently heard that that fire wall was moving at 20 kilometers (12 miles) per hour, plus. They had no chance.”

Timbrell tried to escape the flames in one of the abandoned cars.

“Of the six cars, four of them instantly combusted and as each one started to go, I moved back one car.”

“For some reason of fate, the last two cars, although very, very badly singed and paint bubbled and burnt, survived,” he said. “I survived inside the last one with a cat.”

Malcolm was eventually recused by local authorities, but eight bodies were found down the road from the couple’s house.

Three Britons — including a 93-year-old woman — and one French, Belgian and Spanish national, are among the confirmed fatalities.

Spanish authorities have said four more bodies, discovered in a burnt-out vehicle, are thought to be British.

Kilgore has not yet been formally identified.

“There’s just that little spark of hope,” Timbrell said, “even though I know a body has been found clutching a cat. Hard cold facts are pointing to the bodies they’ve found.”

“So we are just waiting now for DNA clarification. And after that, I will probably just fall apart.”

The blaze in Spain came as Europe swelters under record-setting heat — part of a growing climate crisis that is driving up average temperatures on the continent about twice as quickly as the rest of the globe.

Western Europe has just endured its hottest June ever recorded, causing nearly 10,700 excess deaths, and Italy has already entered its third major heat wave of the season. 

In France, wildfires have already burned more land this year than during all of 2025. Tanker planes have been skimming the River Seine to scoop up water to try and douse blazes raging about 40 miles south of central Paris.

Hundreds of firefighters have been battling two blazes that have already charred about 4,900 acres in the Fontainebleau forest and forced about 1,000 people to evacuate from their homes, according to local authorities.

While much larger fires have hit southern France, the Fontainebleau blazes are relatively close to the densely populated region surrounding Paris.

No deaths or injuries have been reported in the area, and two people have been arrested in connection with the Fontainebleau fires, Interior Minister Laurent Nunez said Tuesday on France’s BFM television.