The second night of work for Putting out the fire declared last Wednesday in Sierra Bermeja has been closed without new evictions, focusing the operation on containment of the fire on the road that goes up from Estepona to the port of Peñas Blancas, as reported by the Civil Protection operation of the Infoca Plan this Friday.
The Minister of Agriculture, Livestock, Fisheries and Sustainable Development, Carmen Crespo, has stressed that the Sierra Bermeja fire, which affects several Malaga municipalities, is “complex”, so it has been decided to raise Level 2 of the Forest Fire Emergency Plan of the Autonomous Community (Plan Infoca).
The counselor added that the place where the fire was declared, together with the circumstances, indicates that the fire “has been intentional”, which is why it is being investigated. “We hope to have data as soon as possible” so that “the weight of the law falls on these people.”
The yesterday ended with a total of 1004 people evicted preventively from different areas of Estepona and Benahavís. Of them, up to 750 correspond to the urbanizations of Forest Hill and Abejeras, 37 from the area of scattered homes in Peñas Blancas on the MA-8301 highway, 12 from the Charca de la Extranjera, 60 from Huerta Padrón and 65 from Río Velerín; while in Benahavís there are 80 people from the upper area of the Montemayor urbanization.
For the evicted, the Pabellón del Carmen de Estepona has been enabled, which has a capacity of 100 people, for which the Red Cross has arranged 50 beds, 100 toilet kits and 100 anticovid kits. At dawn this Friday only about twenty evacuees have made use of this facility. In Benahavís the assembly hall of the Consistory is available.
The Directorate of Extinction of the Infoca Plan has indicated that the Operation of the night has focused on containing the fire on the road that goes up from Estepona to the port of Peñas Blancas with widening burns to secure the area, supported by a control line and a hose laying. While a second sector of work it has focused on keeping the Jubrique and Genalguacil area contained.
As for the communication channels, the MA-8301 and MA8302 roads are still closed, although the cut-off points have slightly varied. Specifically, the latter is interrupted at kilometer 15 and the first It is cut off at km 3.5 and at 25.
A total of 419 professionals work on fire deployment. The forest fire extinguishing device of the Plan Infoca has mobilized 300 troops by land, twelve fire engines and 29 air resources they have started to work again with the clear of the day.
Among the mobilized troops are professionals from the Provincial Operational Centers (COP) Infoca of five provinces: Cádiz, Córdoba, Granada, Jaén and Seville, in addition to those of the province of Malaga. To all of them we must add 15 Emergency 112 Andalusian specialists (112, Andalusian Emergency Group – GREA- and Civil Protection).
It should be noted that the General Directorate of Emergencies and Civil Protection maintains operational the Forest Fires monitoring group with Communication, Operations, Management and Data Exploitation staff and Emergency Management technical advice. They also work in the Civil Guard agents area (16), the Malaga Provincial Firefighters Consortium (22), Estepona Local Police (9), the National Police Unit attached to the Community (6) and the National Police Corps (3), Civil Protection of Estepona (12), Civil Protection of Marbella (6), as well as the Ronda Civil Protection Volunteer Group (12 ), the groups of Algatocín (6) and Cortes (6) and Estepona City Council (6).
TO 03.34 hours this morning have completed 24 hours of activation of level 1 of the Infoca Plan that the delegate of the Government of the Junta in Malaga, Patricia Navarro, maintains in operation. Also follow activated the Municipal Emergency Plan (PEM) of Estepona. 112 has received hundreds of calls from this fire, of which up to 140 calls were handled only in the first moments.