The forest fire in Portbou that this weekend has left the residents and visitors of the area with woe in their hearts yesterday still resisted being controlled. The strong north wind blew strongly again in the morning and prevented the work of the extinguishing services that since Friday faced one of the most complicated fires of this summer.
On Saturday around nine o’clock at night, the fire entered the stabilization phase, with the perimeter marked, with no option to go beyond that limit. But the gusts of wind that blew from early in the morning during the day yesterday made it impossible for the aerial means to fly, without which the fire could not be considered controlled. Of course, during the entire night of Saturday and yesterday, thirty crews worked manually with water lines refreshing the area or with mechanical tools, surgically attacking any column of smoke detected. Staffing was maintained last night and this morning.
The towns of Portbou, Colera and Llançà regained some tranquility yesterday with the reopening of the N-260 road for residents only and the recovery of rail traffic after Adif technicians gave the go-ahead to the installation , which has not been affected by the high temperatures. Only the old road that connects Portbou and Colera remained closed to traffic, which has used the vehicles of the Fire Brigade and Rural Agents to move around the area and continue working there.
The command helicopter was only able to do a reconnaissance flight of the burned area. “We continue with complicated weather, the wind stopped at night, but now we have gusts from 60 to 100 kilometers per hour”, detailed the sub-inspector of the Fire Department of the emergency region of Girona, Miquel Valencia. The sub-inspector, in charge of the intervention yesterday, explained that during the day they had two flare-ups of the fire on the left flank which they managed to control without difficulty.
The weather situation, he added, “forces us to be very attentive to gusts of wind, because the vegetation is very dry, and wind and dry fuel are a bad combination. The aim of the intervention was to control the revivals and prevent the advance on the right flank, in the direction of an area of ??2,700 hectares and with a potential impact on several urbanisations. The tasks were focused on an area with difficult access between Portbou and Colera.
For their part, the Rural Agents maintained level 3 of the Alfa plan (determines an extreme danger of forest fire risk) in 58 municipalities in eight counties and restricted access to six protected natural areas. The areas with restricted access are Cap de Creus and Albera and Montgrí in the province of Girona and Tivissa-Vandellòs, the Ports and Cardó-Boix in Tarragona.
The fire, which broke out around 4:39 p.m. on Friday in a forest track between Portbou and the town’s swamp, at the height of Mas del Molí, has destroyed 573 hectares (550 of forest area, 16 of agricultural and 6 urban). The majority, 387, belong to the municipality of Colera.
On the causes of the origin of the forest fire, the chief inspector of the Rural Agents, Josep Antoni Mur, already explained on Friday afternoon that they managed to locate the exact point where the fire started and began to investigate to try to determine the cause. “We can point out with certainty that it was not due to natural or electrical causes. From here, any cause that may be related to human activity is open; it is an area through which there is a circulation of people, but we cannot specify much more”, he affirmed.
