The crews fight “whirlwinds of fire” and extreme heat in northern Spain

The extreme heat and the strong winds caused “whirlpools of fire” while a fire burned several houses and forced the evacuation of hundreds of people near a national park listed in northern Spain, the authorities announced on Monday.

About 800 people were invited to abandon their house in half a dozen villages in the north of the Castile and Leon region, where several forest fires raged.

Residents of the City of the Conga pulled houses, trees and the roadway with their garden pipes to repel the flames that devoured at least two buildings, while the police told them to prepare for the evacuation.

Smoke was too thick for fire to fight planes to be deployed.

“There are already several houses that have burned, we no longer know what to do. We are completely defenseless and we have been abandoned,” said Evangelina Peral Delgado, Congesta resident, 70.

High temperatures had caused firebits near Las Medulas Park on Sunday, forcing firefighters to withdraw, said Juan Carlos Suarez-Quinones, regional government chief.

“This happens when temperatures reach approximately 40 ° C in a very confined valley, then sudden (fire) enters a more open and oxygenated area. This produces a ball of fire, a whirlwind of fire.”

Scientists say that the warmer and drier summers in the Mediterranean region put it at high risk of forest fires. Once the fires are starting, dry vegetation and strong winds can lead them to spread quickly and burn out of control, sometimes causing whirlwinds of fire.

A prolonged heat wave in Spain continued on Monday, with temperatures to reach 42 ° C in certain regions.

Domingo Aparicio, 77, was evacuated in a city close to his home in Cubo de Benavente on Sunday after a warehouse in front of his house burned.

“How am I supposed to feel?” He said. “It’s always shocking for people close to the disaster.”

Two or three fires may have been launched by lightning blows, said Suare -z-Quinones, but there were indications that the majority was the result of the criminal fire, which he described as “environmental terrorism”.

In the northern part of neighboring Portugal, nearly 700 firefighters were fighting against a fire that started on Saturday in Transcoso, about 350 kilometers northeast of Lisbon.

Until now this year, around 52,000 hectares, or 0.6% of the total area of Portugal, have burned, exceeding the 2006-2024 average for the same period of around 10,000 hectares, according to the information system on fires in the European forest.

The firefighters also fought against the flames in Navarra in northeast of Spain and Huelva in the Southwest, the authorities said.