Fire in Axarquía village comes dangerously close to animal shelter and three houses

The fire was brought under control in just a couple of hours by Infoca crews and five aerial resources deployed to the scene, but the shock will linger for much longer for the town’s residents, one of whom is Ismael Fernández explained how he was spending a peaceful Sunday with his partner on Cantarriján beach, on the border between Malaga and Granada provinces when he received calls from his friends and family.

The couple headed home when they received the calls: “It came close, but luckily there was a gully in between and the fire didn’t spread that far – but that was the fear we all had, because if the wind had changed direction, it could have reached us in no time,” Fernández explained to SUR.

The flames have come very close to the shelter, “about seventy or eighty metres away”. “If the house burns down, well, that’s one thing, but the animals… I was driving home with a heavy heart,” he explained.

“The fire has spread as far as the gardens of three houses, including mine. Thank goodness the fire brigade arrived in time; they stayed near the wooden fences outside the porch and my cousin saw the flames just two metres from her house,” Ismael explained.

In fact, if he had kept his animals at the previous location, they would have perished in the fire, but some time ago he moved for family reasons, which, together with the firefighters’ efforts, proved to be a stroke of luck in saving them.

When he arrived home, Ismael says, "There really were small pockets of fire. So what I did was get the hose out and we carried on like that for a while until there were no more flames.” He went on to say, “Where I used to keep the donkey the whole lot has burnt down. Where her stable used to be,” he said, referring to the former location of his animals. “Luckily, I now have her on an adjoining plot; she’s just 100 metres away, along with all the animals from the shelter, but the whole plot has burnt down.”

He now has 20 animals, including guinea pigs, hens, geese, ducks, rabbits, goats and donkeys, although in April a predator, probably a fox, got in and killed 30 of his animals of various species. "It hasn’t been a good year for me," he admitted to SUR.

Ismael believes the fire may have started on the road, most likely because a driver threw a cigarette end out of the window, as he has heard some of the neighbours say. This is just a hypothesis, of course, pending the official investigation. “It came within a hair’s breadth of three houses. The grass by the wall of some of them has burnt; the firefighters jumped over and knocked down the wooden railings to stop the fire from spreading inside,” he explained, adding that the helicopter landed precisely on the field where the animals are kept.

There are still Infoca crews working to cool the ground, but, fortunately, the worst of this fire is now behind us, as it is under control and will soon be fully extinguished. "Fortunately there have been no injuries and the houses and the shelter have been spared," Ismael concluded.