Military deployed as wildfires in Spain force evacuation of 500 residents

EMERGENCY services have evacuated more than 500 people from seven towns as three wildfires blaze in Andalucia, southern Spain.

A major wildfire was declared in the La Granada de Riotinto area in the Huelva province at 3.50pm on Friday (8 September) and initially led to the closure of the A-461.

Aircraft  and forestry firefighters from the specialist wildfire-fighting teams of INFOCA have been joined by one hundred soldiers from the Military Emergency  Unit to tacke the wildfire that has a front of 20 kilometres (12 miles) across.

Drones and heat-senstive cameras were deployed overnight to monitor the fire-fighting efforts.

Two fires are also still active in Almadén de la Plata and Cazalla de la Sierra areas of the  Sierra Norte de Sevilla.

Grupos de intervención de #Granada (de CEDEFOS de #PuertoLobo y #SierraNevada), en #IFLaGranadaDeRiotinto. En breve actualizamos medios pic.twitter.com/J72Ar6R4jI

— INFOCA (@Plan_INFOCA) September 9, 2017

UPDATE: Wildfires in Andalucia declared ‘stabilised’ but not fully-controlled (10 September 2017)