(CNN) — At least 12 people have been killed in one of southern Spain’s worst-ever wildfires, local officials said Friday, as tragic stories emerge of victims’ attempts to flee the inferno.
More than 460 emergency workers have been deployed to battle the fire near the town of Los Gallardos on Costa de Almería, Spanish Interior Minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska said Friday. At least 1,405 residents had been evacuated from their homes, said Antonio Sanz, the minister for health and emergencies in the region, which is popular among tourists.
“The most devastating fire to date in our region,” he said.
At least eight people are injured, four of them seriously, Grande-Marlaska said.
Andalusia’s regional leader Juanma Moreno said earlier Friday that at least 23 people were missing, but Grande-Marlaska later suggested those numbers were preliminary and that officials have received three official reports of missing people.
Temperature records have been smashed across Europe this summer as countries are hit by heat waves which are bringing extreme temperatures alarmingly early in the year. Firefighters are battling wildfires in Spain, Portugal and France.
Sanz said some victims attempted to escape the blaze via a dry river bed, which turned out to be a deadly “trap.” Four people died in a vehicle, while seven others were killed while trying to get away from the fire on foot, he said.
“Everything suggests that the victims were mostly, if not entirely, foreign nationals, though naturally this cannot be confirmed until their identities are officially established,” Sanz said.
Grande-Marlaska later confirmed that some of the dead were foreign nationals.
The mayor of Los Gallardos, Francisco Reyes, said the situation was “terrifying because there is a lot of wind and the fire has spread very quickly.”
“We have had to evacuate residents from Almocáizar and residents from Terminar de Vedas, and now we are heading towards the campsite because, as you can see, the wind is coming from the west and this is going to reach the campsite, where we also have 400 or 500 people,” he told Reuters news agency on Thursday.
Some relatives of missing people took to social media to share their concerns as authorities search for those unaccounted for, and seek to identify deceased victims.
A woman based in the United States posted on X that her brother was missing after trying to escape the fire through a valley with a group of 10 people. Meanwhile, another woman said on Facebook she had been unable to make contact with her parents after they said they were evacuating on Thursday.
Wildfires are not unusual in Europe, but the climate crisis is driving hotter, drier weather, which is setting the stage for fiercer fire seasons.
Speaking about Spain’s latest blaze, Fernando Ojeda, a professor in the Department of Biology at the University of Cádiz, said more than 3,000 hectares had been burned so far.
“That’s a massive amount. There have been bigger fires, but this covers a huge area. It’s not normal for fires of this scale to occur in Mediterranean landscapes,” Ojeda told Science Media Centre.
Record-breaking heat
Resident Jose Antonio Flores said the fire is a “disaster” for the environment and local people. “This is awful. A disaster, not just for the woodland, but for the people who have already died and everything that has happened. The house right there up above has burned completely,” he told Reuters.
The current death toll makes the blaze Spain’s deadliest wildfire since 2005, when 11 firefighters were killed in the central province of Guadalajara after a fire was sparked by a barbecue, Reuters reported.
Last month, Spain set national records with temperatures on some days reaching 12.8 degrees Fahrenheit (7.1 Celsius) above average, according to the national weather service AEMET.
France and the UK also set record temperatures last month amid the unprecedented heat, with many French towns and cities facing temperatures above 104 degrees Fahrenheit (40 Celsius).
Spain’s meteorological office issued more high temperature warnings in recent days for parts of the Andalusia region. Video released by authorities shows firefighters battling large flames engulfing vegetation in the area.
Meanwhile, emergency services have been tackling blazes in neighboring France too, with thousands of hectares of land burned near the border with Spain, according to local authorities.
In Portugal, recent wildfires have caused plumes of smoke so large they could be seen from space, according to the European Union.
Europe is the world’s fastest-warming continent, with temperatures increasing more than twice as fast as the global average, according to the EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service.
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez expressed his sadness over the recent deaths in the country’s south. “I want to convey my condolences to the families of those who died,” he said on X.
The-CNN-Wire
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