At 12:11 on her birthday, Bárbara received an unusual message: a thunderous ES-Alert emergency system alert that ordered her to immediately leave her home due to the fire surrounding her house.
Sitting in an armchair in the assembly hall of the La Marazuela sports center in Las Rozas, she recounts her day to GRAN MADRID. She does so with a lost look and with Byron, her baby, asleep on her lap. At her feet, Pichi, her canary, flutters in its cage, oblivious to what has happened. Next to her are her husband, Iván; her brother, Yusmel, and a huge shepherd dog.
Meanwhile, a projector loudly broadcasts RTVE’s Channel 24, which reports on the latest news about the fire. As of this edition’s close, the fire has forced 25,000 people to evacuate in the Community of Madrid.
“We were scared but everything important is with me,” says Bárbara, trying to console herself. Her husband holds her hand as she summarizes how, after the alarm, they gathered their animals, boarded a municipal bus, and ended up in this sports center, where they await permission to return home. “I imagine all this must have happened for a reason,” she reflects, appealing to a higher power.
Other evacuees, at least, have some certainty about what will happen in the coming hours. “They told us we would spend about two days here,” a woman staying here briefly explains.
Among sofas in the assembly hall, bleachers, camp stretchers, and dog beds, nearly a hundred residents of Pelayos de la Presa and Colmenar del Arroyo coexist here with emergency personnel, municipal police officers, and volunteers. The paradox is that those from Pelayos had to flee to Colmenar at first before the fire forced them all to end up in Las Rozas.
Among the evacuees from Pelayos de la Presa are Juan and Sofía, two volunteers from an animal shelter. They arrived with their dogs Chiqui and Blanquita and with a third dog, still unidentified, which the Civil Guard gave them. “They told us they had found it scared to death and to take it with us. We are waiting for a chip reader to return it,” Sofía says while holding it on her lap.
She trusts that her home is still standing: “My house is not very close to the mountain and I think it has survived.” Juan has another prognosis: “I have a 2000 square meter plot and I think everything has burned down: my house and the motorhome,” he laments.
“I was able to save my dogs but I also had cats and chickens that I had to abandon. When the Civil Guard came to warn us, the fire was only 10 meters away and they told us to leave immediately because we could get intoxicated.”
Despite everything, Juan clings to a thread of optimism. “The neighbor on the next property has an internet camera and sends me screenshots…” he explains. “You can see fire, but the image is still being broadcast and that gives me some hope.”
Others, however, decided to stay despite the flames. At the doors of the sports center, a family makes a video call via WhatsApp with their cousin who tells them how he hid from the Civil Guard who was combing the town to rescue his animals while giving them the latest news about the fire in Colmenar del Arroyo: “The fire is already next to your houses.”
Read more At the zero point of the fire near Madrid: «We have nothing»
