One of the fires going on in Spain these days was accidentally started by Land Life, one of those companies that plant trees to offset other companies’ greenhouse gas emissions. It’s the fire that has developed in Ateca, a municipality in the province of Zaragoza in north-eastern Spain: It started on Monday and burned down 140 square kilometers, more territory than Land Life tries to reforest in a year – according to 100 square kilometers of post on the company blog.
The fire was started by a spark from a worker using an excavator to clear the ground for tree planting the following winter.
Land Life itself, a Dutch company, said so in a statement released on Thursday. CEOs Rebekah Braswell and Tjeerd Anema said they were “devastated by the damage estimate” and announced they have opened an investigation to clarify responsibilities. The person who actually started the fire is not an employee of Land Life but of a company that the company has contracted out to do the work in the Aragon region. It was the same person who first alerted the fire department about the fire.
Five cities were evacuated due to the Ateca fire, Alhama de Aragón, Bubierca, Castejón de las Armas, Moros and Villaluenga: more than two thousand people had to leave their homes. In addition, all rail traffic between Madrid and Aragon was interrupted.
An Empresa de Reforestación Reconoce that provoked the fire of Ateca, Zaragoza by an involuntary Chispa.
It’s a result of the impacting images that are worth seeing in the area ▶ https://t.co/OEVKRmWptf pic.twitter.com/OAw0Ud1O99
– RTVE (@rtve) July 20, 2022
Land Life said the land clearing company had permission from local authorities to do so, but Spanish newspapers wondered why, given current weather conditions that are favoring the development of fires in many parts of Spain, a decision was not taken to halt activities. Even more so, writes the Confidencial, considering that in June there had already been a fire in the same area, albeit much smaller (20 hectares, 0.2 square kilometers burned).
The reforestation project that Land Life is carrying out in Aragon, which started last December, instead affects 525 hectares, just over 5 square kilometers, a much smaller area than that which burned down this week.
The worst fire to hit Spain this month developed in the province of Zamora in the region of Castile and León in the northwest of the country: at least 250 square kilometers of land were burned, 32 towns evacuated and two people died.