Early wildfire in Spain rages on

Some 700 firefighters are battling Spain’s first major forest fire of the year which was raging out of control 48 hours after it began, forcing 1,500 people to flee. in an update on twitter, the regional emergency services said the fire in Villanueva de Viver, some 90 kilometres north of Valencia, was a “highlycomplex blaze taking place in weather conditions similar to those of the summer”.

“700 people have been mobilised for the operation to fight the fire. it has affected 3,900 hectares and has a 35-kilometre perimeter,” they said. Some 1,500 people had been forced out of their homes on Friday and the huge blaze remained “very voracious” with the work to put it out “very complicated”.Firefighters tweeted that they had deployed some 20 aerial units to help tackle the fire.

Firefighters said the blaze was more typical of summer than of late march. With the vegetation dried out by a lack of moisture in the atmosphere in recent months and large amounts of combustible biomass in the forests, conditions were “perfect” for such a blaze.