The movie of the month November

Unfortunately, the month of November brought an unusually high number of forest fires in the Marina Alta at a time when the summer forest fire danger was thought to be over. The picture above shows the clouds of smoke from the fire in Ràfol on November 3 as seen from the roof terrace of my house in Beniarbeig.

Forest fires in the Marina Alta in November, source: La Marina Plaza

The temporal and local proximity of the fires has repeatedly given rise to the suspicion of arson, but this could not be proven. What is certain, however, is that some of the fires were caused by agricultural burns that got out of control.

What was particularly frightening was that neither wind warnings and the associated burning bans nor the forest fires blazing in the neighborhood could stop the farmers from lighting their fires and thus possibly creating the cause of the next forest fire.

The picture is from November 4 and shows an agricultural fire, while a forest fire that broke out on November 2 near Montixelvo in the hinterland of Gandia was still raging, destroying 2,500 hectares of forest within a radius of 60 kilometers. In the first two days, storm Ciarán had made the work of the firefighting aircraft more difficult, as they had to turn around in gusts of over 100 kilometers per hour without success. 850 people were evacuated. 6,000 people were affected by a curfew and were not allowed to leave their homes.

Further information about the fires in the Marina Alta in November can be found at La Marina Plaza: https://lamarinaplaza.com/2023/11/27/de-record-el-mapa-que-plasma-los-10-incendios-registrados-por-la-marina-alta-en-solo-un-mes/

The movie of the month is from November 16. You can find the whole fire diary on Youtube at https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLdKLZ5sFIwqSm2nuxyQ9cYya9krRIdfVb

At the beginning of January, I’ll show you the video of the month for December.