(Two photo albums at the end of this news item)
A forest fire on San Miguel yesterday “could have been much worse” according to the emergency services who told NEXOnr a fireball jumped from a pine tree up the side of the
mountain setting it alight.
Helicopters and the fire brigade were already attending a fire set in woodland between Calasparra and Moratalla, in Las Torrentes behind the Urbanization Cañada Verde, and they were quickly on the scene of the second fire on the South face of San Miguel which started at around 3pm.
Readers of NEXOnr on the Tierra del Sol urbanization took photos of the smoke rising above the summit of San Miguel and of the helicopters filling up with water at the reservoir between the urbanization and the foot of San Miguel and sent them to NEXOnr (featured a the end of this article).
A spokesperson for the emergency services told NEXOnr that both fires had been deliberately set and that an investigation was in progress but indications are that a local person was responsible.
An area of scrubland on the south side of San Miguel was destroyed and further up the mountain there is a patch of burned shrubbery where the a fireball jumped from one of the pine trees.
When NEXOnr attended the scene of the fire at 6.30pm it had been extinguished although fire fighters were still monitoring the area and the fire investigation team had arrived. The Mayor of Calasparra liaised with the emergency services at San Miguel and lamented there were two more deliberately set fires in the locality.
Last year on the night of the Pilgrimage to the Sanctuary in September, two men, one local, deliberately set fire to the Sierra del Molino apparently as a “decoy” while they stole copper cable in the area. The fire was extinguished before it reached the emblematic Almadenes Canyon but it was a close call. A wide area on the Sierra del Molino and around the Quipar reservoir was destroyed by the fire.
NEXOnr would like to thank readers Tony Hughes, Rick Mead, MT Murray, and Jim and Lesley Finnegan for the photos and thanks too to Fiona Mayoh for alerting us to the fire.
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