one year fire diary
One year of the fire diary is not really a reason to rejoice, except that there is now a year-round documentation of fires and the air pollution they cause in our valley, which is harmful to the climate and health.
The picture at the top of the post is from January 25. The movie of the month for January also comes from this day. While the photo looks like a shot of idyllic morning fog, the time-lapse film shows the formation of the fog clouds from a multitude of agricultural fires, whose mushroom clouds suddenly shoot up and send their harmful cargo first towards the sea and later inland.
You can find the whole fire diary on YouTube. At the beginning of March, I’ll be showing you the video of the month for February.
There were again forest fires on the Costa Blanca in January. On January 5/6/7, the forest between Altea and Calp near the Altea Hills luxury residential area near the Mascarat highway tunnel caught fire. In total, residents had to be evacuated from 125 homes from Altea Hills via Masacrat to the Marvilla housing estate on the Calpe side. The electricity was cut off in a number of houses. The AP-7 highway was closed for hours, as was the N-332 national highway. The streetcar to Alicante also had to stop running. 18 fire-fighting teams from Dénia, Benissa, Benidorm, San Vicente, Ibi, Villes and Elda on the ground and up to six planes and helicopters battled the wind and fire. After the fire was brought under control, Mayor Diego Zaragozí warned the population “to be extremely careful when burning green waste and disposing of cigarette butts” in view of the still unexplained cause of the fire.
Source: YouTube, Nederlandstaligen in Jávea, Calpe, Denia…
On August 21, 2022, there was also a fire with an unexplained cause near the Macarat Tunnel on the AP-7 towards Valencia, which required the deployment of several fire department units to fight it.
On January 9, a pine grove caught fire in the Paratella area in the municipality of Bernissa. Once again, the streetcar service between Benissa and Calp had to be suspended. However, the fire was quickly extinguished.
The uncontrolled burning of crop residues in Benissa had already caused two forest fires in December 2023 (contribution to the film of the month December).