The fire declared last Thursday in La Mierla, in the Sierra Norte of Guadalajara, has devastated 26,000 hectares and has forced the evacuation of 34 towns and inhabited areas, with more than 1,200 people having to leave their homes. It is the most significant fire of the summer and the largest area ever recorded in the Castilla-La Mancha community.
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The perimeter of the fire covers an area of 120 kilometers after advancing about 10 kilometers from Sunday night to Monday. The situation remained very complicated yesterday, which forced the “resizing” of teams to face the fire.
The fire’s advance led to sending an ES-Alert message to several populations on Sunday night, while Spain was playing the World Cup final. Thus, the evacuation of Hiendelaencina was ordered.
The municipalities of Albendiego, Ujados, Cañamares, La Miñosa, and Tordeloso are also confined. About a dozen roads remain partially or totally closed to traffic.
Extinguishing capacity exceeded: “We cannot put a final limit on it,” says García-Page
The Junta of Castilla y León has reported reinforcing the deployment of human and material resources in anticipation that the fire in La Mierla could reach the province of Soria.
The president of the Castilla-La Mancha community, Emiliano García-Page, emphasized that for the regional government the priority in the operation has been “to protect human lives,” while acknowledging the impact on the forest mass and the countryside.
“Once human lives are safe, the priority is, of course, to protect urban centers,” he added. In fact, the affected population centers are “surrounded by the fire,” which explains the difficulty in taking measures and ensuring that “the fire does not enter the houses.” This is something that, so far, has been achieved, except for a rural hotel and an isolated warehouse that have been affected.
The technical director of the device fighting the fire, Juan José Fernández, stressed that the fire is “very far” from being controlled.
In the northwest, forested areas with abundant fuels are burning, where it is difficult to work, while in the northeast, in the Atienza area, the fuels are “much lighter, easier to work with” as they are herbaceous. There are also shrub areas resulting from previous fires.
To address the most complicated areas, attempts are being made to establish control zones that are being expanded with machinery work, a task for which the local farmers are proving “very important,” as they are plowing fields in the Atienza area to try to create barriers against the fire.
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But, “sometimes, despite having a fairly wide firebreak of around 40 meters, the fire has the capacity even during the night to break those control lines and cross them.” “Those tongues cause us many problems and, above all, not being able to work with aerial means from the first hour of the day,” he lamented.
The fight against the fire has been sectorized to better organize intervention tasks, although always focused on protecting people and populations. This means that a “continuous front control” cannot be maintained, and in those discontinuities between populations, Fernández detailed, fire reactivations occur. Additionally, during the nights, a thermal inversion occurs, causing a lot of smoke and preventing work with aerial means from early morning.
Added to this is that “once the sun starts to heat up mid-morning,” reactivations begin, which yesterday started “much earlier than they normally had in previous days,” something related to both temperature and wind.
García-Page has stated that the deployment of resources to combat this fire is “historic,” but warned that the fire is “very serious,” so “we cannot put a final limit on it.”
Farmers mobilized
The Young Farmers Agrarian Association has called on its members and society to go to two points in the south of the province of Soria, “with all possible help” to extinguish the fire. This organization asks that people who have tractors or any implements come to help at the two safe points established in the south of the Soria province, Barcones and Retortillo de Soria. These two localities are on the north face of the Sierra Pela, while the flames have already reached the south face.
Meanwhile, Vox reacted against the investigation opened by the Civil Guard against the mayor of Robledillo de Mohernando (Guadalajara), Rubén Marchamalo, a member of this far-right party, who is accused of allegedly starting the La Mierla fire while carrying out agricultural work with a harvester. “Everything that he and his family have done has been in accordance with the law and taking the utmost precautions,” highlighted the party spokesperson in his statement. “The rapid accusations seem to us to have a political agenda,” he added.
Vox sees a “political agenda” in this investigation, to the point that its national spokesperson, José Antonio Fúster, took advantage of defending the farmer official to repeat his denialist rhetoric. Fúster resorted to the cliché accusing the Castilian-Manchegan authorities of “not fulfilling their function of cleaning the forests,” a measure Vox demands to prevent forest fires, something that, according to his unproven claims, is not applied due to “climate fanaticism.”
This Tuesday, the Government Council will address coordination to carry out the recovery plans that will have to be implemented after the fire, both at the infrastructure level and “everything that the different municipalities need.” The regional president has estimated the cost of the fire so far at nearly 50 million euros.
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