Firefighters battle 'fire whirls' in northern Spain

By David Latona, Susana Vera and Charlie Devereux

CUBO DE BENAVENTE, Spain (Reuters) -Extreme heat and strong winds caused "fire whirls" as a blaze burned several houses and forced the evacuation of hundreds of people from near a UNESCO-listed national park in northern Spain, authorities said on Monday.

Thirteen fires broke out in the north of the Castile and Leon region, with about 700 people told to abandon their homes in half a dozen villages.

Four fires were still live, Juan Carlos Suarez-Quinones, chief of environment for the regional government, said on Monday morning. Firefighters had extinguished the other nine.

High temperatures on Sunday had caused the so-called fire whirls near Las Medallas park, forcing firemen to retreat and burning some houses in the nearby village, according to Suarez-Quinones.

"This occurs when temperatures reach around 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit) in a very confined valley and then suddenly (the fire) enters a more open and oxygenated area. This produces a fireball, a fire whirl," he said.

"This explosive and surprising phenomenon was very dangerous. It disrupted all the work that had been done, forcing us to start practically from scratch," he added.

Scientists say the Mediterranean region's hotter, drier summers put it at high risk of wildfires. Once fires start, dry vegetation and strong winds can cause them to spread rapidly and burn out of control, sometimes provoking fire whirls.

A prolonged heatwave in Spain continued on Monday with temperatures set to reach 42 C in some regions.

Domingo Aparicio, 77, was evacuated to a nearby town from his home in Cubo de Benavente on Sunday after a warehouse in front of his home burned down.

"How am I supposed to feel? It's always shocking for people close to the catastrophe," he said.

Two or three fires may have been started by lightning strikes, Suarez-Quinones said, but there were indications that the majority were the result of arson, which he described as "environmental terrorism".

In the northern part of neighbouring Portugal, nearly 700 firefighters were battling a blaze that started on Saturday in Trancoso, some 350 km (200 miles) northeast of Lisbon.

So far this year about 52,000 hectares (200 square miles), or 0.6% of Portugal's total area, have burned, exceeding the 2006-2024 average for the same period by about 10,000 hectares, according to the European Forest Fire Information System.

Firefighters were also battling blazes in Navarra in northeastern Spain and in Huelva in the southwest, authorities said.

(Reporting by David Latona and Susana Vera in Cubo de Benavente, Charlie Devereux in Madrid and Andrei Khalip in Lisbon; Editing by Olivier Holmey)