Spain suffered the biggest losses from wildfires of any European Union country last year amid a record-hot 2022. Now, firefighters are preparing for a potential scorcher of a summer.
Surveying the hills covered with near bone-dry pines stretching to the Pyrenees in the distance, Asier Larranaga has reason to be on guard.
Spain suffered the biggest losses from wildfires of any European Union country last year amid a record-hot 2022. Four people, including one firefighter, died in blazes that consumed 306,000 hectares. And with Spain sweltering under a record-hot spring, it is again leading the continent in 2023 with 66,000 hectares turned to ashes. Now firefighters like Larranaga across Spain are preparing for a potential scorcher of a summer.
The 52-year-old Larranaga is a member of Catalonia's GRAF, its elite wildfire fighting unit. Members of the Catalan firefighters are currently helping in Canada as part of a Spanish contingent sent to combat the massive fires that have sent smoke over the United States and as far as Europe. "The fires in these conditions can be very intense like the enormous ones we are seeing in Canada," he said. Larranaga added that his worst-case scenario is "a situation where you have people, in a panic, trying to flee, who put themselves in danger because the access roads cross wooded areas," stirring up memories of a tragedy in neighbouring Portugal when over 60 people perished in a fire disaster in 2017.
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