THE deadly Almeria wildfire that claimed the lives of at least 12 people has finally been brought under control, local officials have confirmed.
“We can report the good news, that this devastating, difficult and terrible fire, as we have experienced, has been stabilised,” regional president Juanma Moreno said from the forward command post in Turre on Sunday morning.
According to Moreno, the blaze has been fully contained within a secure perimeter, allowing authorities to downgrade the emergency level and permit the phased return of evacuated residents to their homes.
Firefighters and troops from Spain’s Military Emergency Unit (UME) took advantage of favourable weather and wind conditions overnight to battle the flames, extinguishing flare-ups and using heavy machinery to reinforce the fire perimeter across the worst-hit areas.
“Good news. After very tough days, INFOCA has declared the Los Gallardos fire stabilised,” Moreno wrote on X.
“The fire is contained and delimited. Therefore, we are scaling down to operational situation 1 and authorising the gradual return of the 1,000 people who remained evacuated.
“The response team will continue working to control it. Thank you very much to all the teams for their work, dedication and maximum coordination in all tasks.”
Authorities started lifting lockdown restrictions imposed on affected towns on Saturday night, with 600 people initially able to return.
The remaining evacuees are expected to be allowed home throughout Sunday.
Residents returning to their homes have been urged to remain vigilant in case of further flare-ups and to follow instructions from emergency services, with the firefighting operation expected to continue until the blaze has been completely extinguished.
The UME, which has been operating since the alarm was first raised on Thursday night, will begin to wind down operations after the emergency was downgraded to operational level 1.
However, around 500 personnel remain deployed in the area, including local firefighters and officers from the Guardia Civil, Policia Nacional, BRIF and INFOCA.
Moreno said the bodies of the 12 people who perished in the flames have not yet been identified, with the work of DNA identification proving complex.
On Saturday, samples of human remains were transferred from Andalucia to Madrid, where they will undergo further forensic analysis.
Currently, 23 people remain missing – although authorities have not updated this number since Friday.
But Moreno said he was ‘confident’ that no further fatalities would be found, with no more bodies located during searches so far.
The regional president warned that more devastating wildfires could be on the way as the height of summer approaches and temperatures across Spain continue to soar.
He said an average of 15 fire outbreaks have been recorded across Andalucia in recent months, with as many as 22 blazes recorded on some days.
“Climate change has created increasingly complex circumstances with fires unlike anything we have ever seen before – many of them uncontrollable – such as those we have witnessed in Catalunya, or more recently here,” Moreno added.
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