{"id":793494,"date":"2026-07-10T20:06:12","date_gmt":"2026-07-10T20:06:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/793494\/"},"modified":"2026-07-10T20:06:12","modified_gmt":"2026-07-10T20:06:12","slug":"the-worst-possible-combination-what-has-caused-spains-deadly-wildfires-spain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/793494\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018The worst possible combination\u2019: what has caused Spain\u2019s deadly wildfires? | Spain"},"content":{"rendered":"

As firefighters struggle to quell the flames ravaging southern Spain<\/a> and doctors treat the injured, a horrific picture of the fallout is emerging.<\/p>\n

At least 12 people died<\/a> in a fast-spreading inferno that ripped through Almer\u00eda on Thursday, many trapped in cars as they sought to escape a blaze that scorched 3,800 hectares (9,390 acres). Overwhelmed authorities say eight people have been injured and 23 cannot be accounted for.<\/p>\n

Yet the dozen deaths confirmed in Andaluc\u00eda are likely to represent just a fraction of the fatalities from the fires. Far more deadly than the flames \u2013 on a scale that is hard to comprehend even for scientists who study it \u2013 is the thick black smoke they spew into the air.<\/p>\n

Lung-scarring pollution from wildfires kills a staggering 1.53 million people each year, a study<\/a> found in 2024, with separate research finding a bad season in a single country, such as Canada in 2023<\/a>, can lead to tens of thousands of deaths around the world. Strong winds carry toxic particles across oceans and into homes and lungs.<\/p>\n

When record-breaking wildfires torched the Iberian peninsula last year, killing eight people in Spain and six in Portugal, they produced so much toxic smoke that 2,000 people died early, according to a study<\/a> released as a preprint last month.<\/p>\n

That so many people should die is not a given. Fossil fuel pollution and mismanagement of land have laid the groundwork for increasingly fierce blazes across southern Europe, and the coming decades herald a longer fire season<\/a> that burns stronger and covers a wider area.<\/p>\n

Reports suggest the blaze on Thursday may have been sparked by a fallen power line. This summer\u2019s fires are able to spread quickly because a hot summer turned vegetation into a dangerous fuel, preceded by a wet winter<\/a> and spring that helped plants grow.<\/p>\n

Wildfire locator map in Spain<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cThe Los Gallardos wildfire in Almer\u00eda appears to have faced the worst possible combination: a point of ignition in a vast landscape of extremely dry vegetation, strong winds, and a nearby community that was unprepared,\u201d said Guillermo Rein, a fire scientist at Imperial College London. \u201cThese conditions allowed the flames to spread extremely rapidly toward homes, overwhelming the firefighters operating under extraordinarily difficult circumstances. Recent heatwaves had already dried out the landscape, turning the vegetation into highly flammable fuel.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Western Europe is suffering through its third heatwave<\/a> in two months and this year\u2019s fires are already among the deadliest in Spanish history. They have burned double the usual area for this time of year, data published on Tuesday by the European Forest Fire Information System shows, with triple the number of fires and above-average emissions. Last year, the high number of simultaneous fires hampered firefighting efforts and allowed small fires to explode into huge infernos.<\/p>\n

The steep terrain of the ravine-scarred Sierra de B\u00e9dar lends itself to the rapid spread of wildfires, scientists said, and temperatures in the area reached highs of nearly 42C after several days in a row above 35C. \u201cIn this area, just a few weeks without rain during the summer are enough for fine fuels to reach very high levels of flammability,\u201d said Gustavo Saiz, a senior scientist at the National Institute for Agricultural and Food Research and Technology.<\/p>\n

Alongside the rising heat, the hollowing out of rural Spain has alarmed fire experts as populations age and young people leave farms for jobs in cities. The resultant vegetation overgrowth \u2013 alongside the political tendency to suppress fires rather than prevent them \u2013 has encouraged large fuel build-ups that make mega-fires more likely.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe inertia of the two major processes that have brought us to the current situation \u2013 land abandonment and climate change \u2013 is enormous,\u201d said Juan Picos, a forest fire scientist at the University of Vigo. \u201cEven if we begin implementing ambitious measures immediately, conditions are likely to continue worsening for some time before any significant improvement becomes apparent.\u201d<\/p>\n

He compared shock at increasingly \u201cunprecedented\u201d wildfires to someone climbing a mountain and being surprised each day that they had reached a new height. \u201cIf they continue climbing, they will almost certainly say exactly the same thing again tomorrow.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As firefighters struggle to quell the flames ravaging southern Spain and doctors treat the injured, a horrific picture…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":793495,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[49,48,295,66],"class_list":["post-793494","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-environment","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/793494","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=793494"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/793494\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/793495"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=793494"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=793494"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=793494"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}