Black smoke from the vast tyre dump
fire rises over a housing area in Toledo. Photograph:
Ismael Herrero/EPA
Publicado en The
Guardian
Agencies
in Madrid
13 de mayo de 2016
Residents of nearby Seseña ordered
to leave after blaze at vast dump south of Madrid produces toxic cloud
Spanish officials have ordered the evacuation of 9,000
people living in a sprawling apartment complex close to a raging tyre dump fire
in a town near Madrid.
The massive fire broke out before dawn at the vast
tyre dump, located south of the Spanish capital, sending a spectacular
billowing cloud of thick black smoke into the air that was visible for at least
20 miles (30km).
The Castilla-La Mancha regional government tweeted on
Friday night that about 8,000 apartment residents in the town of Seseña had
already left their homes.
The government said ambulances were being sent to the
complex to evacuate residents with health problems who could not leave on their
own.
Earlier, 10 teams of firefighters were sent to try to
put out the blaze, but it was still raging more than 12 hours after it started.
The regional government said it had activated an
emergency action plan as it believed the fire might last for days.
Firefighters and helicopters were working to
extinguish the blaze, which produced a “toxic cloud … that could affect part of
the (nearby) town of Seseña” with its 20,000 residents, the regional government
added in a statement.
The dump stretches over some 10 hectares (25 acres),
the equivalent of 10 rugby fields, straddling the Castilla-La Mancha and Madrid
regions. By late morning, three-quarters of the site had gone up in flames, the
Spanish capital’s emergency services tweeted.
Authorities had urged residents nearby to close their
doors and windows, and to try and stay away from the smoke, before the
evacuation order was made.
“Everything points to the fact that this disaster was
deliberate,” the mayor of Seseña, Carlos Velazquez, told Spanish radio, pointing out that the area had been rained on
for several days, which makes an accidental ignition unlikely.
The massive pile of tyres started to form in the 1990s
when a company began using the site as a temporary depot for old tyres due to
be recycled.
But over the years these
started to accumulate, resulting in 3m (10ft) high piles. Environmentalists
have for years warned that the dump poses a health hazard, and the town of
Seseña has lived in fear of the rubber heap catching fire.
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These types of blazes are
notoriously difficult to put out and have been known to go on for months and
even years, as tyres often continue to burn inside even if they are
extinguished from the outside, and easily reignite.
Emiliano García-Page,
president of Castilla-La Mancha, warned that the fire could last for several
days.
In a video posted on Twitter
by the emergency services, Luis Villarroel, an official at Madrid’s
firefighting department who was on site, said it was gradually coming under
control. “It’s confined to a few zones,” he said, adding that the smoke was
less intense than it had been.
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