Forest fires ravage Asturias

THE Military Emergency Unit (UME) of Spain joined the effort to extinguish more than 60 simultaneous forest fires that are raging across Asturias.

According to official reports on Wednesday, March 29, many of the fires were small in size and in areas of scrubland, but others pose a much greater risk and resulted in people having to flee their houses.

The condition was made much worse due to the bad weather conditions, which resulted in strong gusts of winds and high temperatures of up to 29 degrees Celsius.

This, as per a news source, has resulted in the Asturian government requesting the in ­ tervention of UME. This has also been done to raise the level of emergency to phase two.

Local reports stated that more than 500 people are working to extinguish the fires including Firefighters of Asturias, the Brigade of Reinforcement of Forest Fires (BRIF) of Tineo, person ­ nel of forest companies, the guard of the natural environment, as well as personnel specialised in investigation origin of the fires.

Meanwhile, high ­ velocity wind in some areas prevented the firefighting work and defensive work was carried out.