Island returns to calm

The final fire, the one of the Galatzo estate, was contained over Monday night and, according to Andreu, there is no reason for the fire fronts to begin spreading again.

Emerging from yesterday's emergency meeting at 11am, he said that the fires and their perimetres are “well contained and they will advance no further,” adding that he hopes to have the situation under control by today when work on extinguishing the fires can begin in earnest.

The number of fire fighters was reduced yesterday to 230 as was the number of water-carrying aircraft.
From the 29 involved on Monday, yesterday 13 were still being used to bomb the last remaining embers of the fire. Plans were also being made for the withdrawal of the military personnel who had been deployed to the island to help fight the worst fire to have hit Majorca for the past two decades.

However, while the fires may be “contained” and hours away from being brought under control, Andreu said it could take as long as ten days, until next weekend, to fully extinguish the blaze.

From today, teams of fire fighters are going to begin working on rotation shifts so that some can have some down time after the hectic past four days of fire fighting.

Also, those fire fighters were deployed from the mainland and other Balearic islands, so they will be able to return home.Nevertheless, the emergency centre still have the island on level 2 alert because of the proximity the embers are to houses and the possibility that pockets could flare up again. The road between Andraitx and Estellencs is also going to remain closed for quite some time because of the continual landslides and the exhaustive inspection engineers are going to have to carry out before it can be reopened to traffic.

But, all of the 730 people evacuated over the weekend are now back home or the hotels the holiday makers caught up in the drama were staying at.
Government sources also confirmed that between 1'800 and 2'000 hectares of land has been destroyed while the Balearic farmers union called for greater steps to be taken over the Winter to protect their land from the forest fires.

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