The first fire of this kind in Europe took place in Pedrógão Grande in 2017, when 65 people died died
Two 32 and 45 -year -old men took the car to escape the flames that were dangerously approaching Cosó, in the Catalan city of Lleida.
The car ended up being trapped and the two men still tried to flee on foot, but were caught by the fury of Catalonia’s first major fire, which has consumed more than six thousand hectares.
The firefighters eventually found both bodies when they beat the area to try to control the perimeter of the flames, which has already been achieved. The two victims were 150 meters from the car they had left in a stream.
As for the origin of the fire, which launched in the middle wave of the Iberian Peninsula, it is suspected it was an agricultural machine. Natural or not, the fire has put the Catalan authorities on maximum alert.
The president of Generalitat, Salvador Illa, suspended everyone and walks with firefighters and civil protection trying to understand what is necessary to do. He himself made the most serious warning: “The fires of now are not like the ones before, it will be a complicated summer.”
But Catalonia, and in a way also Spain as a whole, look at the fire in another way. It was not just a tragedy that stole the lives of two people, but rather a warning to what may be a normal new.
Firefighters have already stated that this was a sixth generation fire (very violent and capable of modifying the meteorology of the place where it triggers). Pedrógão Grande’s fire in 2017, where 65 people died, was the first of the genre in Europe. The flames in Segarra were so violent and unpredictable that the firefighters had no other remedy except, given the time, to suspend the combat. Would return to control it later.
Supported by the wind, the flames went on 28 kilometers per hour, in what is one of the highest speed speeds in Europe, according to the authorities.
It was also here that a pirocumulus, a brutal column of smoke and gray, unfolded that, in this case, reached 14 kilometers high.
“Even if we had the triple of the means we could have extinguished this fire at first,” lamented Salvador Illa.
