The municipal area of Mijas has once again registered a new urban forest interface fire this month of July in the area of El Higuerón, which has affected the neighboring towns of Alhaurín el Grande and Alhaurín de la Torre, being the Sierra of the locality a focus in which more than twenty fires have been recorded in the last two decades, mainly during the summer period.
The acting Minister of the Presidency, Public Administration and Interior, Elías Bendodo, has declared that it is a fire with two main difficulties, on the one hand the forest load in the area and, on the other, the orography of the landwhich is why he has insisted that the next few hours of work “are going to be very important.”
Thus, the fire declared this Friday has led to the preventive eviction of 1,300 residents from the urbanizations Lauro Golf, Jarapalos and Llanos de la Plata in Alhaurín de la Torre and Buenavista in Alhaurín el Grande, and another thousand in the afternoon session in the latter town, which so far affects some 800 hectares.
The municipality already suffered last July 1 a fire that broke out in the area of Valtocado, which was controlled the same day and was declared extinct the following day, in which they participated until three groups of forest firefightersas well as two operations technicians and two Environment agents.
days before, in the At dawn on June 28, another forest fire was declared in the Atalaya areaa fire that was stabilized around 7:00 am and that caused the traffic cut on the A-7053 road between kilometers 6 and 8 in the Entrerríos area, being restored first thing in the morning.
On September 21, 2021, a forest fire in the area Cerro del Mestowhich was controlled that same day and in which they collaborated for its extinguishing a Super Puma helicopter, a Kamov helicopter, two Brica, two fire engines –18 firefighters–, an operations technician and an environmental agent.
The device against forest fires in Andalusia, the Infoca Plan, declared on June 20 of last year a forest fire in the area Cerro del Águilawhere the troops worked by air and land to controll. The fire was declared shortly before 6:00 p.m. and was extinguished around 10:00 p.m., affecting an area of 2 hectares of scrubland and 3 hectares of grass.
In August 2020 the municipality again registered another forest fire that affected the Cerro del Águila area, in which 38 forest firefighters and aerial means participated to extinguish the flames.
On June 27, 2019, the town again registered a urban-forest fire declared in the Cala de Mijas area, where almost twenty forest firefighters and a helicopter worked to put out the flames. while the day 30 of the same month a forest fire was declared again in the Entrerríos areain which forest firefighters and two aerial means were deployed for its extinction.
Precisely in August 2019 the alleged perpetrator of eight fires in Mijas was arrested committed between May 28 and July 13 after discovering the Police Unit attached to the Junta de Andalucía that the arrested person “after starting the fire and fleeing, returned to the place to collaborate in its extinction,” according to Canal Sur. As part of the investigation, a fire was declared in place ‘Loma del flamenco’ on July 13, 2019, which burned 6.25 hectares, where the alleged perpetrator of the eight fires was collaborating in its extinction at the time of the arrest. The modus operandi consisted of directly applying “a heat source” or “leaving a lit cigarette on fine, dry grass”, according to the regional media.
In June 2016, a new forest fire in the area of Entrerríos, specifically between the bridge and the shelter, which was stabilized during the day and affected two vehicles parked in the area. Two years ago, the On July 8, 2014, a fire took place in Mijas that affected 20 hectares of scrub and pine forest which involved the intervention of more than 70 specialists and eight aircraft for extinction, as well as forced the preventive eviction of 55 homes.
On August 2 of that same year, a fire broke out in Mijas that forced the eviction of 150 people from the El Chaparral and Norway street urbanizationsa place where three weeks before the presence of the flames was registered again with the departure of hundreds of neighbors from their homes, the latter affecting ten hectares of scrub and scrubland.
It was in August 2012 when the town suffered one of the biggest fires that have been recorded on the Costa del Sol after the one declared in Sierra Bermeja last year; how was the White Ravine, which affected six municipalities in Malaga, including Mijas. In it, two people died, 4 people were injured, and it burned more than 8,500 hectares in several cities. The The fire originated in a plot of land in Coín and spread to Marbella, Mijas, Alhaurín el Grande, Ojén and Monda..
The Environment Prosecutor requested 7.5 years in prison for the accused of generating the fire, which occurred on a farm where the accused of the event was carrying out maintenance work on a house in the Barranco Blanco area, owned by a Belgian citizen who did not reside in the area, which lit “a bonfire for burning gardening vegetation pruning” on a day in which temperatures of 37.6 degrees and wind gusts of up to 34 kilometers were recorded, as published by Europa Press in December 2020.
On September 12, 2011 a forest fire devastated 1,200 hectares, of which 300 were in the municipality of Mijas, resulting in one of the affected areas in Calahonda. The flames forced the eviction of 200 people from the municipality and affected 4 homes in an area of livestock farms. Altogether, the fire devastated 1,200 hectares and spread to the municipalities of Marbella and Ojénwhere 500 and 200 people were evicted respectively, which began in a small bonfire in the bed of a stream where there are pools of water used for bathing, according to the EFE Agency.
In September 2008 there was a fire in the Sierra del Repetidorin the municipality of Mijas, which affected pine and scrub and forced the eviction of more than a hundred troops, but the worst of the fires recorded in the municipality was the devastating fire that devastated more than 1,100 hectares that were burned in 2001. It was 11:00 p.m. on July 18 of that year when the alarm sounded again.