The fire which broke out on Friday morning near the tourist Costa Brava, in the north-east of Spain, was partially brought under control on Saturday, but has already reduced 2,200 hectares of this area of the Catalan coast to smoke, without causing any injuries, according to firefighters.
• Also read: A fire breaks out near the very touristy Costa Brava in Spain
“The firefighters stabilized almost 70% of the right flank of the fire during the night and maintain the objective of consolidating it before the change in wind forecast for this midday,” indicated the Catalan fire fighters in a press release published Saturday morning.
“The fire, probably due to negligence, affected around 2,200 hectares of mainly forest vegetation,” they said, adding that “containment (was) maintained in the (seven) municipalities concerned”.
The fire started on Friday near the town of La Bisbal d’Empordà, near Girona, about twenty kilometers from the Mediterranean coast.
“The population is asked to avoid any travel in the area”, explain the firefighters.
Around 400 firefighters, including ten aerial teams, are hard at work trying to put out this fire.
According to the Catalan fire chief, David Borrell, “the priority remains the protection of the population”. “When citizens remain confined, they are safer” and “anyone who is outside is exposed to unnecessary risk,” he insisted.
The president of the Catalonia region is due to go there on Saturday morning.
Located on the front line of climate change in Europe, Spain experienced “the worst fires in its recent history” last summer, Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez recalled in May, with 393,000 hectares ravaged by flames according to the European Forest Fire Information System (EFFIS).
In these fires, more than 8,000 in total, eight people were killed, 86 injured and more than 42,000 evacuated, according to the Ministry of the Interior.
