The Firefighters were able to stabilize early this Wednesday morning, minutes before six, the Calafell forest fire (Baix Penedès). The 30 residents evacuated last night from the Mas Mel urbanization have been able to sleep in their homes after the fire conditions improved around midnight. With the perimeter of the fire closed by fifty land vehicles from the fire brigade, the confinement of the urbanization of Mas Mel and Bellamar, the closest to the fire, can now also be lifted. The wind has practically stopped in the area and temperatures have dropped, which has facilitated the piecework of the firefighting teams.
One week before the end of winter, a very active forest fire, enraged by the wind, on a very difficult day in Catalonia with two other fires in wooded areas, forced the eviction of 11 residents of the Mas Mel urbanization last night and the confinement of several of the houses in the same urbanization and in Bellamar, in Calafell (Baix Penedès). The fire, which started at 5:55 p.m. on the Escarnosa mountain, mobilized 48 firefighters to try to contain the advance of the flames during the night.
With a perimeter of 25 hectares last night, the fire burned some fences and gardens, “but did not cause damage inside the houses,” according to the Generalitat’s Fire Department. The main concern, in fact, was the proximity to the two developments and the wind.
The force of the fire was visible from several kilometers around in the Baix Penedès. Before nightfall, with huge columns of smoke, and at night with the glow of the flames.
Earlier in the morning, 25 Firefighters vehicles worked on another forest fire in the mountains inland from Tarragona, forcing the activation of 158 troops. The combination of the fire with wind gusts of up to 90 kilometers per hour in an unusually dry forest, after two years without significant rain, made the fire a challenge for firefighters.
The gale made it impossible for the aerial means to work on the Baix Camp and Calafell fires, leaving the ground vehicles in front of the flames.
In a perfect storm scenario, the piecework of the Firefighters for ten hours, starting at 2:30 in the morning yesterday, made it possible to cut the progress of the fire in Baix Camp. The existence of well-kept agricultural areas next to the forest facilitated the containment of the fire.
Hours of anguish for the residents of Calafell, in suspense all night, and of the Selva del Camp, where the fire started at dawn; also in l’Albiol (Baix Camp) where fifteen residents of half a dozen isolated houses were confined.
Infrequent forest fires at this time of year, at the end of winter, and in the area, next to the Prades Mountains and in the Baix Penedès. The fire potential of the mountains in the interior of Tarragona was 400 hectares.
The weather conditions, especially due to the wind, and the more than two years of drought explain the high risk of fire in part of Catalonia and the strength of the two fires, in Calafell and Baix Camp.
In these two fires, which did not affect any house, almost a hundred land vehicles were mobilized separately yesterday, although not all of them intervened. In the great forest fires of the summer, more than 80 land crews are activated.
The poorly extinguished burning of plant remains with earth would have produced a “carbon effect” in the Selva del Camp, where the morning fire in Baix Camp began. The person responsible for the burning has been identified.
