La Fonteta sheltered 161 people overnight after the wildfire in the Devesa forced them to leave El Saler and its two nearby campsites. The Red Cross figure, reported this morning by El País, counts those who slept in the sports hall, not everyone evacuated.
The València venue became an emergency shelter after residents were ordered to leave the village on Thursday 27 August. The Valencian government confirmed that an ES-Alert evacuation message was sent at 17:20. It also covered the nearby campsites.
From evacuation to overnight shelter
The city council mobilised EMT buses and made La Fonteta and L’Alqueria del Basket available to receive evacuees. According to Europa Press, the Red Cross deployed a rapid response shelter team at La Fonteta with capacity for 400 people. That was the operation’s capacity, not the number who stayed overnight.
The first evacuations had affected the beach near the fire and the Torre 1 apartment building at Gola de Pujol. They were later extended to the village and campsites. Authorities raised the emergency to situation 2 under the Special Forest Fire Plan, and Spain’s Military Emergency Unit joined the response.
Friday’s early morning report still listed closures on the CV-500. The route specified in Thursday’s evacuation message should not be read as permission to drive through the area now.
The affected area remains a provisional estimate
After the overnight meeting of the integrated emergency coordination centre, Cecopi, regional emergency minister Juan Carlos Valderrama put the affected area at 31.38 hectares, with a perimeter of about 4.2 kilometres. The estimate reported by Europa Press revised down the initial figure of 48 hectares. This was a revision to the assessment, not a measure of how much of the fire had been extinguished.
Valderrama said at that point that the evacuations had been precautionary and no homes had been affected by the flames. The same update put the number of personnel involved at around 250. These were Thursday night’s figures, not a final damage assessment or a count of Friday’s deployment.
The cause of the fire has not been established. Central government representative Pilar Bernabé said the Guardia Civil’s environmental unit, Seprona, would investigate in the affected area once it was safe to enter, Europa Press reported. Previous fires in the Devesa do not establish the cause of this one.
Cecopi was scheduled to meet at nine this morning to assess developments. The next decision directly affecting evacuees is permission to return: neither the shelter count nor the revised area estimate amounts to that authorisation.