Fast-moving flames and choking smoke engulfed mountains by the glitzy Spanish resort of Marbella yesterday, killing at least one person, injuring five and sending thousands fleeing.
Around 800 people – firefighters and emergency military personnel, backed by 31 planes and helicopters – battled the forest blaze, which was fanned by warm, dry winds in southern Spain, officials said.
Flames licked the tree tops, lighting up the sky in the early hours as a 12-kilometre line of fire glowed across the Sierra Negra mountains by the Costa del Sol resort.
The inferno, which reportedly forced up to 5,000 people from their homes, killed one man, left a couple with major burns, and sent a mother and her two children scurrying into a cave to escape the danger.
One elderly man apparently made a fatal error of returning to his home near Marbella after he and his wife had been evacuated the previous night, a spokesman for the Andalusia regional government said. His burnt corpse was found near the remains of the house, and firefighters were searching the rubble in case his wife had also perished, the spokesman said.
“The house is charred and collapsed, so the firefighters are going through the rubble because there is a possibility that the woman could have died, but that is not confirmed,” he said.
The couple were not identified.
Another five people were taken to hospital, among them a Spanish couple being treated in Marbella for major second- and third-degree burns over about two-thirds of their bodies, the spokesman said.
“They are in a serious state with mechanical ventilation,” he said, describing them as a married couple: a woman of 58 and her husband who was about the same age.
The flames reached their chalet in the district of Rosario in the foothills of the mountains overlooking long white beaches along the Mediterranean coast, Spanish media said.
A 40-year-old mother and her two children, one aged three and the other 11, took refuge from the inferno in a cave, and were now recovering in hospital, where they were given oxygen and treated for bruises. The injuries were not considered serious, officials said.
The inferno broke out on Thursday afternoon and rapidly gained strength into the night. In the early hours of the morning, the wind died down and a brief sprinkling of rain fed hopes for relief. But the wind blew hard again later in the day as temperatures rose.
In the same region, the town of Ojen’s more than 2,000 residents were all evacuated as a thick cloud of smoke billowed in the cinder-clogged air.
Surrounding trees were blackened by the fire.
In one area people had to be evacuated as the flames engulfed trees just one kilometre (half a mile) away from homes.
In the afternoon, firefighters were focussing on hotspots near Ogen and trying to prevent the fire spreading into new areas after it jumped a highway, officials said.