The fire that has affected several municipalities in the interior of the province of Valencia since Thursday could have been caused. "The human factor" is the main hypothesis on which the agents of the Civil Guard work, who have already taken statements from some witnesses (who are not suspects).
This was indicated yesterday by the Government delegate for the Valencian Community, Pilar Bernabé, who traveled to the advanced command post to follow firsthand the tasks of extinguishing a fire that has already affected around 2,500 hectares in a perimeter of 60 kilometers and which forced the evacuation and confinement of several municipalities.
Fortunately, the Generalitat Valenciana reported yesterday afternoon that "all the restrictions in the municipalities affected by the fire, except for Ador and the Montecorona and Corona housing estates" were lifted. During these days there have been close to 6,000 people confined and 850 more have been evicted due to the proximity of the fire to different parts of the affected towns.
It is the second major fire to occur in the Valencian Community outside of summer, after another fire, declared in March in Vilanova de la Reina, burned almost 5,000 hectares.
Regarding the cause of the fire, the Government representative explained that the investigation will have to determine whether the start of the fire "was due to an intentional or accidental human cause", although she affirmed that, in any case, the human factor seems to be the cause of what has happened.
It should be noted that the fire started on Thursday, when the Valencian Community suffered the effects of the storm Ciarán, which caused a great virulence of the wind and facilitated the rapid spread of the fire. Adverse weather conditions initially prevented the aerial media from participating in extinguishing tasks.
Although yesterday the evolution of the flames allowed the restrictions to be lifted in a large part of the affected municipalities and the majority of residents were allowed to return home, the Emergency Coordination Center of the Generalitat reminded that the traffic within the perimeter of the fire and in the surrounding areas, as the officers continue to work with heavy machinery and the extinguishing activity could be hampered.
Likewise, it is requested to avoid any activity in the area related to the practice of hiking, motorcycling or mountain tourism, as it can be "very dangerous, because there are still hot spots". In fact, before the restrictions were lifted, the Civil Guard located some people in an urbanization in Ador, despite the fact that the area had been evacuated and they had not yet been authorized to return to their homes.
