Wildfire in southern Spain kills 12, leaves Britons among missing

At least 12 people were killed and 23 were missing after a wildfire tore through a remote expat community near Los Gallardos in Spain’s Almeria province, with at least four Britons believed to be among the victims. Eight people were injured, including four in serious condition, as emergency crews searched the scorched terrain and tried to identify the dead.

The blaze broke out late Thursday near the Sierra de Los Filabres mountains and raced through forest and farmland, consuming more than 3,200 hectares, or 7,900 acres. About 150 firefighters and 220 soldiers from Spain’s military emergency unit were sent to the area as wind, extreme heat, scrubland and esparto grass fed the fire’s spread.

Several of the dead were found in burnt-out vehicles, and others died after abandoning their cars and trying to escape on foot. Officials said most of the victims ignored shelter-in-place instructions, and some tried to flee through a dry riverbed that became a deadly trap as the flames overtook the area. The majority of those killed were believed to be foreign nationals, including British and Belgian nationals, though final identification was still pending.

The disaster has exposed how exposed expat settlements and rural communities can be when fire moves quickly through dry, lightly defended landscapes. In southern Spain, where heatwaves have turned forests and scrubland into tinder, the combination of steep terrain, sparse access roads and fast-changing wind can leave residents and tourists with little time to react. For American readers, the scene is a warning about evacuation planning, land management and the risks that come with building or vacationing in extreme-heat zones that are increasingly prone to fast-moving fire.

Juan Manuel Moreno, the regional leader in Andalusia, said the steep, dry terrain, scrubland, esparto grass, severe heat and wind made containment difficult, and described the blaze as one of the fastest and most complex wildfires the region had seen. Pedro Sánchez expressed condolences and said he felt “immense sadness and desolation” over the fire’s consequences.

The fire is now being counted among Spain’s deadliest wildfires on record, and the death toll was expected to rise as search-and-rescue operations continued. The scale of the deaths, the number of missing people and the foreign nationals caught in the flames have drawn grim comparisons with Portugal’s June 2017 wildfire, when more than 60 people were killed during a heatwave and about half died in cars.