The speed, scale and ferocity of the wildfire in and around the Bédar municipality of Almería took everyone by surprise.
Jeanne Henny, an English woman who has had a house in the tiny hamlet of Los Pinos for 33 years, initially took Thursday afternoon’s yellow skies as proof that a calima wind from the Sahara was showering desert dust on the area. Then she noticed the smoke and saw from a fire-alert app that a blaze had broken out.
“There was a lot of smoke, but it was far away,” said Henny, 74. “We get fires and there’s some kind of scare most years. The police will come to each house and tell us to get out and there will be sirens going. But this time it didn’t happen like that.”
The gravity of the situation became apparent when a neighbour knocked on her door at 5.30pm and told her it was time that she and her friend, who uses a wheelchair, abandoned their house.
It took Henny almost half an hour to get her friend and two dogs into the car. She had to leave her five cats behind.
The pair drove to the next village, Serena, about 1km away. “We were supposed to go to the town of Bédar but there’s only one main road,” Henny said. “There’s an alternative route, but it’s too hard to get to.”
She had reached Serena and was about to turn towards Bédar when she saw the fire was surging up the cliff on to the road.
“I had to make a split-second decision and do a three-point turn to get away from Bédar,” said Henny. “It was a narrow road, and if I’d missed that three-point turn, I would have gone over the cliff. But the fire was pouring on to the road so I had to make that split-second decision and I did the turn in one and just made it.”
The manoeuvre saved their lives. After driving up the mountain and down a rough path for another 5km, they reached safety. Others, she now knows, were not so lucky.
“Some people took the alternative road and they died in their car,” she said.
Perhaps the most frightening thing about the fire, Henny said, was its sheer speed: “You thought it was miles away and then suddenly it was in front of you on the road.”
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Juan Manuel Moreno Bonilla, the regional president of Andalucía, said most of the 12 people who had died in the fire appeared to have been foreigners, including hikers. “I think they’ve been caught off-guard in the woods. When there’s a sudden fire … you don’t know how to get out,” he said.
Ángel Francisco Collado, the mayor of Bédar, said he and others had gone door to door, telling people to evacuate along an officially approved route, or to stay put.
“Some people didn’t want to leave and they stayed in their houses and are still alive,” he said, adding that some decided to leave when it was too late. “A group of nine people was told to stay put but they didn’t listen,” he said. “Seven of them are dead and two are on the way to hospital with severe burns.”
Francisco Miguel Reyes, the mayor of the nearby municipality of Los Gallardos, said the past few hours had been terrible. “The fire is fearsome and it’s devoured everything in its path,” he told Cadena Ser radio. “The difference between yesterday and today is just devastating.”
Henny, who was speaking as helicopters swept through the smoky skies overhead, said that while she had no idea what had happened to her house or her cats, she felt “very lucky” to be alive.
“I’m with some friends, but if the wind changes, then obviously we’ll have to leave here as well. But I had an incredible escape.”