Villas Evacuated After Forest Fire Spreads Near Benidorm

A wildfire burns nearby Benitachel village near Valencia on Monday.

Officials suspect the fire was started deliberately.

Paul Wakefield, from the Vale of Glamorgan, was sitting on the veranda of a holiday home where he had been staying in the popular resort of Javea when the fires broke out.

Fires raged around Spain’s eastern Costa Blanca resorts on Sunday and Monday, forcing more than 1,000 residents and tourists to flee, emergency services said, APA reports quoting Reuters.

Local sources have said a group of 15-year-old youths have been arrested over the fires.

An enormous fire has destroyed homes and woodland, forcing the evacuation of thousands of people from towns close to Benidorm in the Alicante province of Spain.

Emergency services said on Sunday they had nearly brought the blaze under control, but when water-dumping aircraft were stood down after sunset the fire surged again.

They were put up in schools.

Radio 1 DJ Chris Stark was also caught up in the incident, and took to Twitter with a video of the flames. “This is insane. I think my vehicle and maybe my apartment is on fire.”, he tweeted. He tweeted that he and his family were safe, but scared.

Most of Spain faced an “extreme risk” of wildfires on Monday due to the heat, with temperatures over 40 degrees Celsius (104 Fahrenheit) in some parts.

Wildfires destroyed 39,700 hectares of land between January and August, according to the agriculture ministry.