3000 evacuated as wildfires burn for 3rd day in Spain

Some 300 firefighters were combating the flames on Friday, with the fire fanned by strong winds and aided by scorching temperatures.

Some 1, four hundred residents of the villages of Acebo and Perales del Puerto, in addition to holidaymakers from a quantity of mountain campsites, have been taken in a single day to the close by cities of Caceres and Moraleja, the federal government added.

According to the BBC, campsites and towns in Spain have been evacuated as helicopter and planes assist in tackling the problem of the blaze in Sierra de Gata mountain area.

The fires, which were all started on Thursday by lightning strikes, have so far burned more than 700 hectares of land, local officials said. “It’s a tragedy for the village”, Acebo’s deputy mayor, Jose Javier Gonzalez Iglesia, told Spanish public television.

Fernandez Vara stated it was the fifth hearth within the space in current months and every little thing signifies they’ve been began deliberately. He said evidence pointed to the existence of numerous separate ignition points, indicating that “man’s hand must be behind these fires”.

Several other wildfires were burning in the southeastern region of Murcia.

The fires have up to now burned 620 hectares (1,500 acres) of land.

“We hope that later in the day we may have better news than we have had throughout this hard night”, the head of the regional government said in a statement.

Wildfires have destroyed more than 54,000 hectares of agricultural and forest land in Spain this year, exceeding the amount burned during the last two years combined, according to the agriculture ministry.

The average temperature in Spain last month was 26.5 degrees Celsius, the agency said Wednesday.