Laurence Dollimore
A COAL company’s negligence has been blamed for the devastating Huelva fires that began last Saturday.
Head of the Infoca in Huelva, Jose Antonio Martínez, has confirmed that the source was a coal company in the municipality of Moguer.
“We had to wait a little to make public this kind of information because that technical report is still to be completed,” he said.
According to El Espanol, the working theory of Seprona cops is that flames became out of control in the process of creating charcoal at the coal plant, which has not been named.
From there, the climatic conditions caused the flames to spread with speed, giving rise to several different starting points.
It was at 9:20 pm on Saturday that the Andalucian Forest Fire Prevention and Extinction Facility (Infoca) was notified of a fire in La Peñuela, Moguer.
It had been declared in an area that crosses a forest track and is surrounded by many strawberry farms.
Forest fires are included between articles 352 and 358 of the Penal Code.
Burning hills is punishable by up to five years in prison (20 years if people’s lives are put at risk).
However, it says that ‘who by serious negligence will provoke any of the fire crimes mentioned in the previous sections, will be punished with the lower penalty in degree,’ which reduces the penalty by half.
