Spanish villagers ordered to flee their homes as wildfires rage nearby often have just minutes to grab what they can: Most pets are banned, and some don’t even have a chance to get their hands on medicine.
“Everyone has to leave the village quickly, the situation is critical and people are scared,” Olga Congacha, 50, told AFP on the highway, where police had blocked access to her hometown of Robledo de Chavela.
“My husband and I left with all the important documents we could get our hands on and some clothes.”
On Sunday, police asked her to return home briefly to get the medication she needed before surgery.
She found her house covered in ash.
Wildfires in central Spain have burned tens of thousands of hectares. Ecology Minister Sara Aagesen said on Sunday that a disaster near Madrid was the largest in the country’s recent history.
-Family keepsakes-
Roberto Velasco, 84, brought a small suitcase and a hard drive containing copies of old family letters and mementos from his Chilean family during the 50 years he spent in Spain.
“I didn’t know what to bring. I thought the whole house was going to burn down,” he told AFP at a makeshift evacuation center at the Coliseum in northern Madrid after taking a bus from the village of Navarra Gamera.
“At first I thought I would bring some music and books,” he said, sitting wearily on a cot in a dirty gray T-shirt.
“But I only brought the hard drive and some clothes, not the towel.”
-Pet Canary-
At another shelter in Villamanta, west of Madrid, 81-year-old Jose Luis looks at his phone screen.
Smart cameras installed around his home streamed images of his home, now under a clear blue sky, with yard hose unfurling where he left it.
When the phone rang with an evacuation alert, he and his wife fled minutes later, leaving their village of Aldea del Fresno with next to nothing.
The police then asked them to go home for half an hour to get their medicine.
His wife took the opportunity to leave double the ration for their canary, Pavarotti.
“He had the voice of an angel,” Jose Luis said.
“When you played music for him, he wouldn’t stop singing bachata, rock ‘n’ roll, anything loud.”
During the brief return trip, José Luis watered the plants and grabbed his electric razor.
Like other evacuees, he asked that his full name not be used because he did not want his vulnerable situation to be made public.
– wildcat –
Rosa, 56, refused to leave her two rescue cats in Robledo de Chavela.
“They’re wild and you can’t catch them without a net,” she said.
“I called the animal control officers but they were not allowed into the village.”
Eventually, police forced her to evacuate her home. She was one of the last people to leave the village when the flames reached it.
“They kind of lied to me and said they were going to get the cat out, so I said okay. But of course, they had no intention of getting the cat out. They were coming to see me,” she said.
“The cats are fine, they’re in the house and have something to eat. I left everything for them. The only problem is that the floor will be dirty.”
– Dirty T-shirt –
Margarita, 70, took a break at the gym in Villamanta, pointing to the stains on her T-shirt, which she had worn for four days.
She was nursing a swollen ankle after a fall at an evacuation center.
She and her daughter Helena, 45, said they were well looked after, eating normally and being given paracetamol when needed.
Spain’s King Felipe VI and Queen Letizia visited them and other evacuees from Aldea del Fresno on Sunday.
“The queen came to greet us and I was wearing this dirty dress,” Margarita said.
Helena explained: “We came with only the clothes on our backs. We thought we could go home the next day.”
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This article was generated from automated news agency feeds without modifications to the text.
