Firefighters Stretched To Contain Huge Tarragona Fire

Hundreds of firefighters are tackling a series of forest fires engufing the town of Tarragona in the province of the same name in the northeastern region Catalonia.

The huge summer blaze, has ripped through the municipalities of Bellprat, Les Piles and Santa Coloma de Queralt, over the weekend without abatting.

It has been reported by local media that up to 270 firefighters as well as 12 specially adapted aircrafts were called out to douse the flames and stop the spread of the fire.

Billows of black smoke can still be can be seen as much as 60 kilometers away with ashes falling in Barcelona which is situated just over 100 kms to the north.

The forest fire is the latest following one that broke out inthe municipality of Torre de l’Espanyol last week, which consumed more than 4,000 of hectares farmland in the Vinebre, la Palma d’Ebre, Flix and Maials areas.

The head of the Catalan Fire Department, David Borrell, was reported by local media as saying, ” it was hard to be optimistic’ about putting out the wildfires across Tarragona as the terrain is complicated, this generates a lot of difficulties, the weather conditions are not favourable. This means we are overwhelmed and are having to work very hard to achieve our objectives”.

“The problem is not so much the resources available but rather the difficulty of the terrain and the weather conditions,” he concluded.

The head of the fire department, Manuel Pardo told Catalunya Ràdio that it had been ‘very hard’ to defeat the wildfires as temperatures fall and humidity levels rise overnight.

The high temperatures are expected to continue until next week and some areas could experience high winds, which is an additional hazard to control the spread of the fire.

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