in Villanueva de los Castillejos (Huelva), remains active and presents a very complex evolution. This morning, the soldiers of the Second Intervention Battalion of the Military Emergency Unit (UME) from the Morón base (Seville) joined the extinction tasks, after, at midnight, the acting Emergency Minister, Antonio Sanz, announced the elevation of the emergency plan to operational situation 2 and the request for help from the military given the worsening of the situation due to the strong gusts of wind, higher than expected, and the risk of a change in the direction of the air this Wednesday.
Sanz explained that, despite a favorable evolution in the morning, the fire had been reactivated by a wind “much stronger than what appeared in any forecast”, which fueled already controlled outbreaks on the left flank, the tail and the head, with special potential for spread towards the north. Looking ahead to this Wednesday, he said, the situation was likely to worsen due to the change in wind expected from 11:00, which could reverse the head and tail of the fire and accelerate its advance.
For this reason, during the night the night operation has been reinforced with technical fire tasks, heavy machinery and preventive actions in areas close to urban areas. In total, about 300 troops have participated in these tasks.
The UME troops will be able to use their bulldozers, pumpers and nurseries, and will have the reinforcement of fire stations of the consortium and of Huelva capital. The forecast is that this Wednesday there will be more than 25 air means. This morning, there were no roads closed, but Adif has cut off railway circulation in the Gibraleón section due to the fire.
The fire has several fronts: the left flank – the area with the greatest vegetation load -, the head of the fire, close to Gibraleón, and the tail, where the fire originated, and where work has been done to avoid reactivations caused by the increase in wind speed, which has made the columns of smoke more visible this afternoon.
