The strong north wind that whipped the Alt Empordà and the south of France with force yesterday, with gusts that reached 120 km/h in Portbou or 100 in Port de la Selva, was the main enemy of the fire that in the morning he declared between Banyuls de la Marenda and Cervera, about ten kilometers from the Spanish border and that he arrived in Catalonia in the early afternoon. According to the latest balance of the Prefecture of the Eastern Pyrenees, the fire would have burned about 1,000 hectares of forest mass. And of these, around 100 correspond to the protected natural area of the Albera massif, in the Portbou region, according to the latest count by rural agents.
Not even the 400 Gallic and Catalan firefighters who worked hand in hand on the ground, first in French territory, where the fire originated, could prevent the flames from crossing the border by the hill of the Farella and arrive at Portbou, border town of Alt Empordà. But then, the aerial means of the Fire Department were forced to return to the base because they could not fly over the area due to the force of the wind. A fact that made the extinguishing tasks even more complicated, although at the end of Sunday the forecast was that this Monday morning the fire could be considered stabilized.
As a precaution, before the fire crossed the border and reached the Empordà, the evacuation of two isolated farmhouses in Portbou had been ordered, one very close to the border and the other on a road that leads to a swamp . In total, about six people. The eviction of the La Muntanya neighborhood was also decreed, between 50 and 70 people approximately, according to the mayor, Xavier Barranco, who, late in the afternoon, was moderately optimistic about the evolution of the fire. “The town is not in danger; the northern side of the mountain has burned, but there are no personal injuries," he declared. The Catalan Traffic Service cut off traffic on the N-260 road, near this border town, and the French authorities did the same with the D-914 road, which connects Perpignan with Cervera de la Marenda . In the latter town, around 200 residents were evicted, according to its mayor, Christian Grau, in statements to Catalunya Ràdio. "With this strong north wind, the fire runs very fast, this is an ecological disaster", he lamented.
The fire started in an area close to Peyrafite beach, in the municipality of Cervera around ten in the morning, for reasons that are currently unknown. As in Catalonia, the forests of the south of France are extremely dry due to the lack of generous rainfall in the last year. The prefect of the Eastern Pyrenees, Rodrigue Furcy, explained yesterday afternoon in statements collected by Le Parisien that "three quarters of the perimeter of the fire in Cerbère was controlled".
The fire also forced the suspension of train traffic between Portbou and Cervera. There were also no trains running between Portbou and Perpignan, according to the French operator SNCF.
Portbou City Council, in collaboration with Red Cross officials, enabled the town's civic center to serve the evicted. But last night none of the affected residents had made use of the resource, as the mayor told this newspaper. The only ones were about twenty passers-by, mostly French, who were forced to stay a few hours in Portbou by the N-260 road closure. In fact, Civil Protection reported that the residents of Portbou were able to return to their homes and announced arrangements with the Gerndarmerie for the French to do the same.
