Malaga The Sierra Bermeja fire claims the life of a firefighter
He was 44 years old and had two little girls and this was his sixth campaign with Infoca, the Junta's plan for the prevention and extinction of forest fires.
Firefighter
Carlos Martínez Haro
lost his life this Thursday when he participated in the device that tries to put out the devastating fire that had been advancing through the Sierra Bermeja de Málaga since the day before.
A difficult, rugged orography, which is not easy to access by land means, and weather conditions conducive to the rapid expansion of fire became allies of those who, supposedly, intentionally caused a fire that has already calcined more than 4,000 hectares and affects an environment of special environmental value in the municipalities of
Estepona, Genalguacil, Jubrique and Benahavís
.
The president of the Board, Juanma Moreno, was especially shocked by the tragedy on Friday and used thick words to refer to those allegedly responsible for the incident.
"We will use all the means at our disposal to hunt down those murderers."
The fire soon became a threat to the population of the area and, since early Thursday morning, forced the eviction of more than a thousand residents from the urbanizations and scattered throughout the region, mainly from Estepona. But it was the death of the Infoca agent that has shown the true danger of a fire that feeds itself
thanks to the intense wind
that has been blowing in the surroundings since Wednesday, the low humidity of the terrain and the high temperatures. It's what firefighters know as the
fearsome
30/30/30 formula.
: that is, less than 30% humidity, more than 30 degrees of temperature and winds of more than 30 kilometers per hour. During Thursday and Friday the gusts reached 50 kilometers per hour, preventing the troops - more than 400 working simultaneously - from being able to confine and contain the advance of the flames.
The Minister of the Presidency,
Elías Bendodo
, who has been
sent
to the Command Post in Estepona, has described the fire as one of the most complicated that Infoca has faced in recent years, and has made mention of the difficulty of the work as a consequence of the formation of a
pyrocumulus
,
a heat cloud
formed from the ascending winds that generate high temperatures, evaporated water and ash particles. At first in the morning that cloud prevented the air resources displaced from the place (about 30) from taking off, to which hydroplanes and helicopters of the National Plan have already been incorporated.
Fortunately, the cloud soon began to dissipate and all available troops were deployed. In the middle of the morning, the Ministry of Agriculture and Environment announced the elevation of the emergency to level 2, which makes it possible to request more human and material resources from other autonomous communities. Given that there is no other major fire in the country, all attention is focused on meeting the needs of the Malaga operation. Also the
Military Emergency Unit (UME)
is prepared in case it has to intervene. And so the President of the Government transferred it to the President of the Board during the conversation they had on Thursday night, when Juanma Moreno called Pedro Sánchez to inform him of the firefighter's death.
Throughout Friday we have continued working with conditions still adverse because the wind has given little respite. The affected municipalities had set up pavilions to house those who had to abandon their homes, but the vast majority of them were welcomed by family and friends. Only a dozen of those evicted spent the first night at the Estepona sports center.
Meanwhile, in the Almeria municipality of
Las Tres Villas,
the hometown of the deceased firefighter, a minute of silence was observed and three days of mourning were decreed.
There, its mayor,
Virtudes Pérez
, in statements collected by Europa Press, remembered the boy who was Carlos Martínez Haro when he ran with his friends through the streets of the town.
The agent currently lived in Roquetas de Mar, where a minute of silence has also been observed, and belonged to the Infoca AE214 checkpoint in Almería, with an operations center in Dalías and attached to the Cedefo de Alhama de Almería.
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