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Firemen try to extinguish a fire yesterday near Figueras in northern Spain |
The blaze claimed its fourth life Monday when a 64-year-old Frenchman, who suffered 80% burns after his car was engulfed in flames died at a Barcelona hospital, the Catalan regional government said.
Another 23 people were injured, including eight who remain in hospital, it added.
The wildfire broke out on Sunday near the town of La Junquera and spread rapidly across the Alt Emporda region near the French border, whipped up by winds of up to 90kph.
Smoke from the blaze, which has so far ravaged up to 13,000 hectares of land, reached Barcelona, Spain’s second-biggest city located some 150km south of the border.
“The fire is still raging. The winds are less strong now and aeroplanes have now swung into action,” said a spokesman for the fire brigade in Catalonia.
About 500 firefighters backed by 22 French and Spanish water-bombing planes and helicopters were battling the blaze, emergency services said. Officials were not able to deploy aircraft against the flames on Sunday due to the strong winds.
Firefighters struggled to prevent the fire from spreading to areas of thick vegetation which would make it more difficult to bring under control, the interior minister of Catalonia, Felip Puig, told reporters.
The fire was likely caused by a cigarette butt or small explosive device that caught fire due to “recklessness or negligence”, he added.
Rene Bidal, the prefect of the southwestern French Pyrenees-Orientales frontier region, told AFP: “On the French side the fires are under control, they are not spreading, we are in monitoring mode.”
A Frenchman and his 15-year-old daughter died on Sunday after they threw themselves into the sea to escape the approaching flames near the town of Portbou just across the border with France.
“From where they jumped you would have to project yourself about 1m to reach the sea. They probably did not jump far enough and they hit the rocks below,” said Portbou mayor Jose Luis Salas-Mallol.
A 75-year-old Frenchman died of a heart attack as he watched his house consumed by flames in the town of Llers.
Up to 4,000 people were living without power.
Officials yesterday reopened a key highway linking Barcelona to the French city of Perpignan but were forced to close it again several hours later. A high-speed rail link between Spain and France remained shut.
Firefighters ordered thousands of residents in 17 towns, including La Jonquera and Biure, to remain indoors with their windows and doors shut.
Catalan police on Sunday evacuated 93 people, including 74 children, from a camp near the town of Sant Climent Sescebes and transferred them to a nearby military base as a precaution.
Spain is at higher risk of forest fires than ever this summer after suffering its driest winter in 70 years.
Last week hundreds of people were driven from their homes on the island of Tenerife after a wildfire broke out.
The worst fire ravaged 50,000 hectares in the eastern Spanish region of Valencia earlier this month.
Croat firefighter dies in Adriatic blaze
A Croatian firefighter died and tourists were evacuated yesterday as several wildfires fanned by strong winds broke out on the country’s northern Adriatic coast.
The 45-year-old firefighter died while extinguishing a blaze near Moscenicka Draga on the Istria peninsula, local fire service official Slavko Gaus told HRT television.
Another forest fire broke out in the hinterland of the port of Rijeka, some 180km southwest of Zagreb, and spread towards the nearby coastal resorts of Selce and Novi Vinodolski.
In Selce, tourists from two campsites were evacuated and part of the Adriatic coastal highway was closed, said police spokesman Tomislav Versic.
He did not disclose the number of tourists evacuated, but the camp sites can accommodate some 2,000 people.
The coastal area is being buffeted by strong winds of more than 100kph which make fighting fires very difficult as water-bombing planes cannot be used.