Posted on 08/10/2006 2:23:46 PM PDT by Republicain
A Spanish police unit specialising in organised crime has been investigating the spate of forest fires which have ravaged northwestern Spain in recent days, amid claims that many were deliberately set.
Teams made up of firefighters and more than 3,500 forest workers, backed up by 30 aircraft, were battling 56 blazes Tuesday in the worst hit northwestern region of Galicia while a further 40 were regarded as being under control.
Also affected, though to a far lesser degree, was the eastern region of Catalonia.
After Galician regional president Emilio Perez Tourino asserted Monday that "the majority (of the fires) are caused by criminal means", Spanish Environment Minister Cristina Narbona on Tuesday dubbed the fires "forestry terrorism".
She said she suspected some forestry workers had set fire to tinder dry land in anger at not being employed as auxiliaries over the summer by regional firefighting units.
Local officials have also cited "conflicts between ranchers and sheep farmers and landowners" over increasing grazing space and "behavioural problems" as further causes.
Following a similar spate of fires last year believed linked to property speculation -- a sector undergoing a huge boom in Spain -- the government passed a law banning immediate rebuilding on land devastated by fire.
Local Galician authorities meanwhile announced that two suspected arsonists had been arrested while one of three others arrested overnight Monday was released.
Of the first two, one was caught setting a blaze and the other turned in by his neighbours for suspicious behaviour.
The mayor of the worst hit zone of Pontevedra, Miguel Anxo Fernandez Lobec, told Cadena Ser radio he was "encouraging citizens to denounce the arsonists."
The Galician rural environment department said earlier that "we cannot rule out that there is an organisation behind all this," explaining the deployment of the anti-organised crime unit.
The blazes in Galicia, several of them raging within metres (yards) of residential areas, have come within two kilometres (1.2 miles) of the famous city of Santiago de Compostela, the end point of an historic pilgrimage trail.
The fires nearest the historic centre had been extinguished by Tuesday afternoon.
Three people have died in the fires -- two engulfed as they tried to flee in their car and a pensioner who tried to douse the flames near his home.
Spain's armed forces have been deployed to help coordinate civil protection, including evacuations, and prevent fires being lit.
In neighbouring Portugal 10 forest and brush fires were burning nationwide Tuesday, battled by 900 firefighters backed by 300 vehicles, six of them out of control.
The most serious was that at Valongo, near the northern city of Porto, where wind-fanned flames were advancing on two fronts. Some 300 men with 100 vehicles and a helicopter dropping water were combatting the fire.
Another fire, at Estremoz in the southern Evora district, was reported under control, though rising temperatures and low humdity meant that it could break out again, authorities said.
Police are investigating the possibility that the blaze, which has ravaged some 4,000 hectares (10,000 acres) of eucalyptus forests, was started deliberately.
So far this year 17 people have been arrested in Portugal for starting fires.
The country is on maximum alert until Friday because of the heatwave.
Sounds like the religion of peaceniks are striking again.
Just because islamofascists have figured out how to build in Iran, ship to Lebanon, and launch missles just north of Tel Aviv, take out ships with Chinese silkworms, kidnap Israeli soldiers, build fortified bunkers 100 feet underground, send 100's of thousands of children to clear mines armed with "keys".... doesn't mean they've figured out how to light matches, does it?
Didn't this happen in California during the fire season last year?? IIRC, they said some of the larger blazes in Southern California last year were deliberately set. I thought I heard news reports on one or two occasions that Middle Eastern men were either oberved in the areas were the fires started, or were actually seen setting them. However, my memory is not the best - maybe someone else remembers this better than I. Either way, if true, this seems to be a tactic they are now employing on both sides of the pond.
Where there's a will to destroy, the simplest way is sometimes the match ;-)
I walked the Camino de Santiago two years ago. Somebody had gone along and spray-painted swastikas over the markers and had painted "Alahou akbar" (allah akhbar in French) on the paved parts of the path. It would not surprise me in the least if somebody with a similar agenda was now going along scattering matches.
After all, the Muzzies captured Santiago hundreds of years ago and made the Christians they enslaved carry the cathedral bells hundreds of miles to Granada, to melt down and make the lamps for the mosque they had installed there. The Muzzies eventually got kicked out of Spain and Santiago was restored to Christian Spain, but I'm sure they'd like another shot at it.
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