{"id":519381,"date":"2026-07-10T14:50:09","date_gmt":"2026-07-10T14:50:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/519381\/"},"modified":"2026-07-10T14:50:09","modified_gmt":"2026-07-10T14:50:09","slug":"i-had-an-incredible-escape-british-woman-tells-of-close-encounter-with-spanish-wildfire-spain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/519381\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018I had an incredible escape\u2019: British woman tells of close encounter with Spanish wildfire | Spain"},"content":{"rendered":"

The speed, scale and ferocity of the wildfire in and around the B\u00e9dar municipality of Almer\u00eda took everyone by surprise.<\/p>\n

Jeanne Henny, an English woman who has had a house in the tiny hamlet of Los Pinos for 33 years, initially took Thursday afternoon\u2019s yellow skies as proof that a calima wind from the Sahara was showering desert dust on the area. Then she noticed the smoke and saw from a fire-alert app that a blaze had broken out.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere was a lot of smoke, but it was far away,\u201d said Henny, 74. \u201cWe get fires and there\u2019s some kind of scare most years. The police will come to each house and tell us to get out and there will be sirens going. But this time it didn\u2019t happen like that.\u201d<\/p>\n

The gravity of the situation became apparent when a neighbour knocked on her door at 5.30pm and told her it was time that she and her friend, who uses a wheelchair, abandoned their house.<\/p>\n

It took Henny almost half an hour to get her friend and two dogs into the car. She had to leave her five cats behind.<\/p>\n

Almeria region map<\/a><\/p>\n

The pair drove to the next village, Serena, about 1km away. \u201cWe were supposed to go to the town of B\u00e9dar but there\u2019s only one main road,\u201d Henny said. \u201cThere\u2019s an alternative route, but it\u2019s too hard to get to.\u201d<\/p>\n

She had reached Serena and was about to turn towards B\u00e9dar when she saw the fire was surging up the cliff on to the road.<\/p>\n

\u201cI had to make a split-second decision and do a three-point turn to get away from B\u00e9dar,\u201d said Henny. \u201cIt was a narrow road, and if I\u2019d missed that three-point turn, I would have gone over the cliff. But the fire was pouring on to the road so I had to make that split-second decision and I did the turn in one and just made it.\u201d<\/p>\n

The manoeuvre saved their lives. After driving up the mountain and down a rough path for another 5km, they reached safety. Others, she now knows, were not so lucky.<\/p>\n

\"FirefightersFirefighters tackle deadly wildfires in southern Spain<\/p>\n

\u201cSome people took the alternative road and they died in their car,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Perhaps the most frightening thing about the fire, Henny said, was its sheer speed: \u201cYou thought it was miles away and then suddenly it was in front of you on the road.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Juan Manuel Moreno Bonilla, the regional president of Andaluc\u00eda, said most of the 12 people who had died in the fire appeared to have been foreigners, including hikers. \u201cI think they\u2019ve been caught off-guard in the woods. When there\u2019s a sudden fire \u2026 you don\u2019t know how to get out,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u00c1ngel Francisco Collado, the mayor of B\u00e9dar, said he and others had gone door to door, telling people to evacuate along an officially approved route, or to stay put.<\/p>\n

\u201cSome people didn\u2019t want to leave and they stayed in their houses and are still alive,\u201d he said, adding that some decided to leave when it was too late. \u201cA group of nine people was told to stay put but they didn\u2019t listen,\u201d he said. \u201cSeven of them are dead and two are on the way to hospital with severe burns.\u201d<\/p>\n

Francisco Miguel Reyes, the mayor of the nearby municipality of Los Gallardos, said the past few hours had been terrible. \u201cThe fire is fearsome and it\u2019s devoured everything in its path,\u201d he told Cadena Ser radio. \u201cThe difference between yesterday and today is just devastating.\u201d<\/p>\n

Henny, who was speaking as helicopters swept through the smoky skies overhead, said that while she had no idea what had happened to her house or her cats, she felt \u201cvery lucky\u201d to be alive.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m with some friends, but if the wind changes, then obviously we\u2019ll have to leave here as well. But I had an incredible escape.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The speed, scale and ferocity of the wildfire in and around the B\u00e9dar municipality of Almer\u00eda took everyone…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":519382,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[273,111,139,69,147],"class_list":["post-519381","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-environment","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/519381","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=519381"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/519381\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/519382"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=519381"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=519381"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=519381"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}