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We might be in the thick of winter, but sadly wildfire season has been extended in the Region of Murcia thanks to a very dry autumn. On Tuesday November 11, a forest blaze broke out in Lorca which required two helicopters to extinguish.

 

Right around 3pm, several panicked residents of Zarcilla de Ramos, a hamlet in the municipality of Lorca, called the 112 emergency service to report that a fire had broken out in some dry and brittle esparto grass and was spreading rapidly through the parched scrub.

 

The affected area, packed tight with dense vegetation, is the ideal kindling for fires, so two firefighting helicopters were immediately deployed to the scene of the blaze.

 

Two members of the Civil Protection unit from Lorca, six firefighters from the Murcia Region Fire and Rescue Consortium, ten members of the Totana and Zarcilla Forest Brigades, two environmental agents from the General Directorate of Natural Heritage and Climate Action, and the helicopter-transported brigades 010 and 020, with a total of ten forest firefighters, battled the wildfire for more than two hours.

 

Thankfully, the fire was declared under control by 5.15pm, but several personnel remained in the area to make sure the flames didn’t spark up again.

 

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