35% OF LOCAL FOREST FIRES CAUSED BY ARSON

As Spain’s Emergency Services battled to extinguish at least 10 separate forest fires burning across the country this week another two fire fighters were killed last week while tackling a wildfire in Torremanzanas, a small village inland from Alicante.
According to the Spanish Minister of Agriculture Spain is at exceptionally high risk of fires this summer after suffering its driest winter in 70 years so the news released last week that one in three of all fires is started deliberately is an especially bitter pill to swallow as casualties and deaths are expected to rise even further during the particularly dry months of July and August. In the Alicante region alone, where the temperature reached 40 degrees Celsius in recent days, eight helicopters and six water dropping planes were called in to assist firefighters on the ground to douse the Torremanzanas blaze.
The Spanish Government said that over 132,300 hectares of land had been consumed by flames this year up to 5 August, with a total of 2,000 different fires, the worst devastation in more than a decade.