Collserola residents express their anger after the fire was stabilized: “The mountain is respected”

Anger is spreading among residents of Barcelona’s Nou Barris district after the fire – now stabilized – that broke out yesterday afternoon in the Collserola mountain range, convinced that the fire was deliberately started or the result of negligence.

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In addition, the fire, which has already affected some 54 hectares of surface, led to the intervention of the Medical Emergency System (SEM), which attended to seven people with minor injuries. According to the SEM, six of those affected were discharged “in situ”, while a seventh person had to be transferred to the Primary Care Emergency Center (CUAP) Casernes, located in the Sant Andreu district.

“The mountain is respected because it gives us life. If we burn what gives us life, we burn ourselves,” reflects a resident of the Les Roquetes neighborhood, located at the foot of the Collserola mountain range, in statements to EFE, with the fire now under control after firefighters managed to consolidate the perimeter of the affected area overnight.

“I was in the room, watching TV, and around 3 PM I heard the firefighters pass. I looked out from the dining room, saw flames coming out and the fire going up,” recalls Antonia, another resident of the area, holding a packet of tissues and an inhaler in the same hand. “I wasn’t scared, but this place was full of police and firefighters. Luckily, they didn’t evacuate us,” the woman adds.

Another resident of Roquetes says she wasn’t worried about the smoke either because she doesn’t suffer from any respiratory illness and because of her confidence in the units that were deployed to the area to fight the flames.

“All the units that have come from the Civil Guard, the Mossos d’Esquadra or the Firefighters have behaved magnificently because they haven’t rested for a moment,” she assures. However, she openly shares her anger about what happened, claiming that those who did not behave well are “those who started the fire.”

“They are brainless people who only think about doing evil. Burning a mountain is like hitting a dog, more or less, because both are defenseless,” concludes the woman, convinced that the fire was deliberately started, despite the origin of the fire still being unknown.

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Likewise, residents of the Torre Baró neighborhood demand more maintenance in the mountain after the fire in Collserola. Several residents have explained to ACN the moments of tension experienced due to the proximity of the flames, the smoke, and the uncertainty about the evolution of the fire. “This is abandoned by God,” laments Andrés Ruiz, who believes that the City Council should keep the environment “cleaner and better cared for.”

For her part, the president of the Torre Baró Neighborhood Association, Valeria Ortiz, demands that, beyond the emergency, the fire serve to focus on the maintenance of the mountain neighborhoods. She assures that for “almost four years” residents have been warning that there are sick trees and denounces that, when pruning is done, plant remains are left on the mountain which, she believes, can increase the risk of fire. “If there is a neighborhood association or a neighborhood platform that is warning us about the poor maintenance of the mountain, let’s listen to them,” she demands. “Because then this happens,” she concludes.

Once the worst has passed, Barcelona Firefighters, plus about twenty vehicles from the Generalitat Firefighters and aerial means, are working this morning to finish controlling and extinguishing the fire, which led to the confinement of some 15,000 people from the neighborhoods of Ciutat Meridiana and Torre Baró, a confinement that was lifted this morning.

This is the second fire in Collserola this summer, after the one on August 14 that affected the Sant Pere Màrtir area, which forced the preventive confinement of residents of Can Caralleu. For that fire, which affected about ten forest hectares, the Barcelona Urban Guard arrested an alleged arsonist.