Walter Finch
TWO people have died in devastating wildfires that swept through Catalonia yesterday, forcing 20,000 residents into emergency lockdown.
The victims were found dead near their vehicle in the municipality of Cosco, Lleida province, as twin infernos raged simultaneously across the Segarra region during Spain’s latest brutal heat wave.
Catalan police have launched an investigation into the deaths.
The two men killed were well-known local farmers from Agramunt – the owner of a pig farm and one of his workers.
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The employee had been trapped by smoke at the livestock facility and called his boss for help. When the farm owner arrived to rescue him, both men were overcome by the blaze.
Extreme weather conditions turned the fires into a nightmare scenario for emergency services, with wind gusts reaching 125 kilometres per hour and a towering column of ash and smoke stretching 14 kilometres into the sky.
“At times, it was very difficult to manage,” admitted regional councillor Núria Parlon from the emergency command centre set up in Guissona.
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The larger of the two fires, near Torrefeta and Florejacs, has burned approximately 5,000 hectares and proved the most destructive.
A second blaze in Sanaüja was initially brought under control by firefighters at 3.52pm on Tuesday, only to flare up again due to the erratic wind conditions.
Civil Protection issued mobile phone alerts ordering preventive confinement for residents across nine municipalities, including Agramunt, Guissona, Artesa de Segre, and Ponts.
The lockdown affected around 20,000 people living within a 25,512-hectare zone deemed at risk.
The emergency forced firefighting teams to continually redesign their strategy as the blazes behaved unpredictably, driven by the powerful winds that meteorologists described as creating ‘erratic’ fire behaviour.
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Late on Tuesday night, the Catalan government declared the main fire stabilised after securing a perimeter around the blaze, allowing Civil Protection to lift the lockdown orders.
Fire service chiefs have ruled out any additional fatalities within the contained area.
The dramatic pyrocumulus formation observed during the crisis – reaching 14,000 metres altitude – has been described as ‘a phenomenon never before observed in Catalonia’ by Lleida fire chief David Borrell.
The fires struck as Spain continues to battle extreme temperatures, with the latest blazes highlighting the country’s vulnerability to increasingly severe wildfire seasons.
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