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The great forest fire of Moratalla

Moratalla, Noroeste, Murcia

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The great forest fire of Moratalla

Historical milestone · Moratalla, Noroeste, Murcia

Image of Moratalla, not of the place itself.

The Moratalla fire of 1994 began on 4 July in the area of the Peñón del Serrano, possibly caused by an electrical fault when a pine tree made contact with power lines, following cabling maintenance work in the previous days. The fire destroyed more than thirty thousand hectares of woodland in the municipality in 1994, the largest fire recorded in the Region of Murcia: almost the entire Sierra de la Muela and Sierra del Cerezo burned, along with the hills up to the sanctuary of Nuestra Señora de la Esperanza, in Calasparra, with fronts also at Benizar, the Camping La Puerta -which had to be evacuated- and Cieza, together making up a perimeter of 90 kilometres. There were no fatalities, and the recovery of the pine forests and undergrowth has continued over decades.

1994

Photo: Pablo Cabezos from Mostoles, España (CC BY 2.0)

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