ReutersAt least 12 people have died and 23 others are missing in a wildfire in southern Spain that emergency workers were battling to contain on Friday.
Officials said it appeared flames spread in the Los Gallardos area of AlmerÃa on Thursday afternoon after an electricity pole fell in woodland and sparked a blaze.
Speaking to local media, several eyewitnesses described the devastation as “like a bomb has fallen” on the municipality, while others recounted the fire’s “unbelievably quick” spread.
Lucinda Curtois arrived in Spain with her partner Riyaz Cheytan and their teenage children for a holiday on Thursday.
“Within 15 minutes there was a tiny bit of haze, to black smoke, to flames,” Curtois told the BBC. “It was really frightening and unbelievably quick.”
HANDOUTThe family grabbed a change of clothes, bundled into the car and headed for the main road close to the property.
“We turned the corner and all of a sudden the fire was there, there were two coaches of people evacuating too,” said Cheytan.
They were forced to turn around and find another route, with Curtois saying that as they drove away “it was almost like there was a mushroom cloud of smoke, it was like a bomb had gone off”.
The family made it to a hotel about half an hour away, along with other evacuees, but said some family friends who had set off walking to evacuate were currently missing.
Fellow Brit Peter Chapman was with his wife Shelagh at their holiday home in Mojacar, a short drive from Los Gallardos, on Thursday.
When he first noticed the sky darkening, Chapman thought a storm was coming. “Then there was that smell of smoke in the air,” he told the BBC.
“You could see a glow in the sky in the distance. The only way I can describe it is by thinking of how my mother used to describe the London bombings during the Second World War. It was surreal.”
The couple stayed at the property but woke on Friday morning to ash and smoke in the air.
On a local Facebook forum, Chapman said people were asking others for information on potentially missing people. “It’s just terrible,” he added.
Peter Rowlinson, who lives in Los Gallardos, praised the efforts of authorities in controlling the fire but said the experience had been “very frightening”.
He is now staying at a relative’s house. “We left last night, the smoke was horrendous. We had to get out. The house is still there but there is ash everywhere,” he told the BBC.
Rowlinson lamented that “hundreds” of people had been displaced, adding that many locals had offered spare rooms, bars and restaurants. “There’s a real sense of community in the whole area,” he said.
ReutersAndrew Mills, who is semi-retired and moved to Spain five years ago, said wildfires were common during summer months.
But this fire was different, he said, adding that “within two hours that whole set of mountains was alight, they just had no chance of stopping it”.
Some of those who were able to escape or avoid the flames have also paid a high personal cost.
Los Gallardos resident Jose Antonio Flores watched as flames engulfed the land he had tended for decades.
“It rips your soul out,” he told Reuters news agency. Pointing to his son, he said: “I raised him there, where the fire is. I had 600 orange trees.”
Throughout the day on Friday, hundreds of firefighters, military and law enforcement personnel, and 30 aircraft, continued responding to the blaze.
“This is the first time we’ve faced a fire as devastating as this,” Los Gallardos mayor Francisco Miguel Reyes told Spanish radio station Cadena SER, adding that “it feels like a bomb has fallen” on the area.
“When I think about how everything was before the fire started and see how it is now, it’s breathtaking.”
