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MORE THAN 1,000 people have been evacuated from a popular tourists resort on Spain’s Costa Blanca after a wildfire fuelled by intense heat roared through brush surrounding it.
Some 300 firefighters backed by 20 water-dropping aircraft were battling the blaze, which broke out yesterday near the Mediterranean resort of Javea, a local emergency services official said. Officials suspect the fire was started deliberately.
Officials evacuated over 1,000 people late on Sunday from Javea and the resort of Benitatxell near Benidorm, popular with British and German tourists, due to the threat from the flames.
They were put up in schools. Residents of Javea also offered to put up evacuees for the night and gave them food and water, Javea city councillor Maria del Pilar Zamora told private television Antena 3.
Photos and videos posted on social media showed flames raging near built up areas. Several homes were completely destroyed by the fire, according to Antena 3.
Among those who posted photos of the blaze was BBC host Chris Stark, who was on vacation in the area.
“This is crazy. I think my car and maybe my apartment is on fire,” he tweeted yesterday.
Firefighters said the blaze was fuelled by scorching temperatures and low humidity levels.
Most of Spain faced an “extreme risk” of wildfires today due to the heat, with temperatures over 40 degrees Celsius in some parts.
Spain routinely suffers wildfires during the hot summer months, but there have been fewer large blazes in 2016 than in recent years.
There were just 13 wildfires that destroyed over 500 hectares of land between 1 January and 28 August, according to a tally kept by the agriculture ministry.
- © AFP 2016.
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A true visionary. Silence of the lambs was pretty much perfect. Such a loss.
RIP to a stylish director who leaves a great legacy. Surprised that he was 73, I thought he was much younger than that. And screw you, cancer.
I’ve never in my life seen such a filthy cruel thing as cancer. Lost loved ones and friends the past year and an half to it. It takes everything away except one’s character one’s courage and one’s love and those it limns with glory I suppose. But really behind that there is nothing to say for it and little to say for our efforts at curing it in my experience. Throw bag after bag of poison at it until we either kill it,or it kills us.
hope he’s having some fava beans and a nice chianti
@David Peate: hope he’s having an old friend for dinner….RIP
Before he hit gold, he made a brilliantly simple video for new order’s song “the perfect kiss”. A sign of brilliant cinematography and creativity in an 8 minute soundtrack from a shed in Manchester. Cancer is an awful bollix.
Ate breakfast a couple of times with him at the skylark diner in Nyack when I had a part-time supers job on Francis Avenue, he lived in an old colonial down on the river. We where both fiends for the corn beef hash. He clearly enjoyed the company of the regular folk. RIP
Stop making sense
Philadelphia was such a powerful film.
Another really talented man lost that God forsaking disease.
See comments for our true green blooded Irishman are closed…
Was it The Ambassador that showed Stop Making Sense?. There was a strange wiff of smoke in the room. By the end we were all dancing in the aisles. Happy out.
Anyone that can evoke the emotions feelings and fears that he did by making a movie like silence of the lambs is a genius.
R.I.P
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