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Three days of exhausting firefighting finally paid off on Sunday July 12 when the Los Gallardos wildfire in Almería was brought under control, but not before it claimed thirteen lives.

 

Four people remain in hospital in serious condition, ten missing persons reports are still open and more than 1,000 evacuees have now begun making their way back to homes they were forced to flee days earlier.

 

The death toll climbed on Sunday after a 93 year old British woman with pre-existing health conditions passed away in the ICU at Torrecárdenas University Hospital, where she'd been in critical condition.

 

In total the fire tore through 7,000 hectares across a 40 kilometre perimeter.

 

The President of the Regional Government of Andalucía, Juanma Moreno, confirmed from an advanced command post in the Almería town of Turre that the area is now "contained and no longer in danger of spreading." He described the development as marking the beginning of the end of what he called a horrific fire, one that had broken records for the sheer speed at which the flames spread, to the extent that it's thought to be among the fastest moving wildfires ever recorded in Andalucía, and possibly in Spain as a whole.

 

 

A brief change in the weather gave firefighters the window they needed. Humidity climbed above 90% and winds eased off, allowing crews to move from simply holding the line to attacking the fire directly. Around 32 aircraft were in the air at once, backed by roughly 500 personnel drawn from the Infoca Plan, the Military Emergency Unit and the Almería Fire Consortium, Mr Moreno pointed out.

 

That easing of conditions also meant the area's 1,000 evacuated residents, many of them foreign nationals and a large number of them British, could finally start heading home after days of not knowing what state their houses, or the animals they'd left behind, would be in. President Moreno reassured residents that almost all of the properties had survived intact.

 

Search teams were back out on foot on Sunday, working alongside dogs and drones to comb through hotspots that hadn't yet been checked, focusing particularly on ruined houses and dry river beds to make sure nobody had been left unaccounted for. In the days before that, Guardia Civil officers, UME personnel, the Andalucían Emergency Group and the Provincial Council's Civil Protection canine unit had all carried out georeferenced searches to rule out anyone being trapped beneath the ash or connected to the missing persons cases.

 

Although the physical search has now wrapped up, the Guardia Civil is still controlling access to Bédar, the town at the heart of the disaster. Only residents' family members are currently being allowed in, with entry barred to everyone else.

 

Identifying those who died is now the priority, with four of the victims believed to be British although this hasn't been officially confirmed. The Guardia Civil's Forensic Science Service has already gathered genetic profiles from the victims and is now waiting to cross reference these against relatives of the foreign nationals involved, some of whom have already arrived in Spain.

 

The Integrated Data Centre said it currently isn't possible to confirm the identity or nationality of those who died, and the number of people reported missing has risen to ten. Among them is a French national, according to the French government, while Belgium has said three of its citizens may be among the dead after officials were unable to reach them.

 

How the fire actually started remains one of the biggest unanswered questions and it's now the subject of a judicial investigation. Early findings pointed to a cable that had come loose from a power line near an abandoned restaurant in the hamlet of Almocáizar, which is where the fire is believed to have begun. Energy company Endesa said the cable belonged to a private installation that had been disconnected from the grid and de-energised for years.

 

 

Even so, the Guardia Civil stressed that every possibility is still being examined.

 

President of the Spanish Government Pedro Sánchez is due to visit the affected area on Monday July 13, accompanied by Minister for Ecological Transition Sara Aagesen.

 

Mr Moreno believes climate change played a part in creating the conditions that allowed the fire to spread so quickly and warned that the consequences tend to be tragic when blazes move at this speed. He's urged residents to follow official guidance and to take lessons from what's happened, warning that Andalucía and Spain as a whole are facing a difficult summer ahead.

 

That warning comes as Spain heads into another stretch of extreme heat and high wildfire risk this week, with Aemet having already flagged very high or extreme fire danger across much of the mainland through Thursday. Temperatures are expected to climb well into the high thirties in several provinces, and inland parts of Andalucía are among the areas the agency has specifically named as being at risk again over the coming days, so the concerns raised by President Moreno look set to remain relevant for some time yet.

 

 

Images: UME