Victims of Spain’s deadliest wildfires in four decades “ignored the order to evacuate”, the Andalusian emergencies minister has claimed.
Twelve people have died in Los Gallardos, Almeria and a further 23 people are described as “unlocated”, with seven missing person reports received by the Guardia Civil.
As the fire continues to rage, Spanish politicians are at odds over the responsibility for the death toll, the worst since 20 people were killed in a fire on La Gomera, in the Canary Islands, in 1984.
Spain’s Transport Minister Oscar Puente questioned why the national ES-Alert mobile phone emergency messaging system was not used to warn the local population.
But Antonio Sanz, the Health and Emergencies Minister in Andalusia’s regional Government, said Puente “had no idea” – and claimed that the victims chose to “ignore the order to evacuate” and then “went the wrong way”.
Sanz added: “They were supposed to leave, but they stayed. In the end, they made the decision at the last minute – and took the wrong path, leading them into a trap that cost them their lives.”
He insisted that an indiscriminate message to the whole area would have increased the chaos on the ground, and that specific instructions had to be distributed in each village and hamlet by the emergency services and local councils.
Behind the front lines of the fire, where more than 500 firefighters and 32 aircraft have been attempting to douse the flames, Guardia Civil officers searched the scorched ground and burned-out dwellings for further bodies.
Some of the corpses found were so charred that post-mortem examinations have revealed no useful information.
Four victims found in a right-hand-drive car are believed to be those of a British family. Eight others were found near the village of Bedar, apparently fleeing the flames on foot.
The fire was apparently started by sparks from a broken power cable in Los Gallardos last Thursday local time. It then spread at extreme speed uphill towards Bedar, a scenic mountain village where around half of the 950 inhabitants are British pensioners.
“The evacuation was not especially organised. I heard my neighbour shout, ‘Get some clothes on and leave!’,” said Ken, a British resident of Bedar, who still did not know whether his house had been spared by the blaze.
“The flames reached Bedar at surprising speed,” Raul Aguilera, a spokesman for the Guardia Civil, told the Telegraph. “The decision to evacuate was taken as quickly as possible with the information we had available.”
The fire found almost perfect conditions to spread with enormous speed, with gusts of wind of 50km/h propelling the flames up the steep hillside, with the slope acting like a chimney, accelerating its spread.
Abundant winter rains had caused a large growth of scrub which had become tinder-dry after weeks of hot summer weather. The fire advanced around 14.5km in just two hours.
“Nothing was done since the last big wildfire a few years back,” said Barry Jeapes, 79, who is originally from Kent and has been living in Los Gallardos for the past 15 years.
“They had time to dig trenches and make proper firebreaks,” Jeapes said as he walked his dog outside the sports hall in the seaside town of Garrucha, where he and his wife were being cared for with other evacuees.
For environmentalists, the Los Gallardos fire was a disaster waiting to happen.
Ruben Vives, of Ecologistas en Accion in the neighbouring region of Murcia, said allowing people to build houses “up lanes in the middle of scrubland and ravines” was irresponsible.
“The local authorities should demonstrate the legality of buildings and their construction permits. It’s human error, not the hillsides that kill people. Here there were illegal buildings in the Cabrera-Bedar protected sierra,” Vives said.
Los Gallardos is considered one of Andalusia’s most vulnerable regions for wildfires, but its mandatory local emergency plan is out of date, according to La Vanguardia newspaper.
But there was also praise for the emergency services’ response to the fire, with several British residents of the village of La Alameda describing the process as smooth and well-organised.
Jeronimo Vera, the leader of Andalusia’s Red Cross, said his teams had provided food, shelter and support to some 500 people, “the vast majority British people”.
Around 100 locals remained in shelters in Garrucha and Lubrin.
“Many are in great need of emotional support as the days go by and the uncertainty remains over what has happened to the homes they have made, and their pets in some cases,” Vera said.
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