Three Belgians Killed in Spain’s Deadliest Wildfire

A devastating wildfire that tore through the Almería province of southern Spain on July 9 has claimed 13 lives, including three Belgian citizens, with more than 20 people still missing. A detailed reconstruction by Het Laatste Nieuws reveals how the victims became trapped in a terrifying ordeal as flames surrounded them from multiple directions.

The Fire’s Origin

The blaze began around 5:00 PM local time on Thursday, July 9, near a roundabout on the N-340a highway outside Los Gallardos. Temperatures exceeded 40°C with strong westerly winds gusting up to 70 km/h, creating what fire scientists describe as the worst possible conditions for a wildfire.

Darko Juresic (71), a retired Belgian butcher from Eksel, and his wife Reinhilde (74) witnessed the fire’s first moments from their garden. They immediately noticed something different about this blaze. “They say it was a snapped electrical cable. Not true!” Juresic told HLN, pointing instead to discarded cigarette butts littering the roadside berm as a more likely cause. Investigators have been conducting forensic analysis at the site since Saturday.

Within hours, the fire had consumed 7,000 hectares — an area equivalent to roughly 10,000 football fields — advancing at approximately 100 meters per minute. The flames formed a kilometers-wide wall of fire moving inexorably toward the picturesque hilltop village of Bédar, home to around 1,000 residents, many of them British and Belgian expatriates.

A Deadly Trap

Stanislas Verdonckt (63), a businessman from Leuven, and an unnamed married couple from East Flanders owned holiday homes in a dead-end street on the hillside outside Bédar. As the fire approached, they monitored developments from their properties, seeing flames coming from only one direction. What they could not see was that the fire was also advancing from behind the hill.

Around 8:00-9:00 PM, they attempted to flee by car. Upon reaching the top of the hill, they discovered flames on multiple sides and were forced to turn back into the dead-end street. At least four cars carrying approximately eight people — Belgians and British nationals — gathered on a gravel path. One British man returned to his house. The remaining seven drove to the end of the path, a dry plain, where they became trapped.

Stanislas called his son Thomas-Wolf for the last time around 9:00 PM. He sent a voice message: “Overal is vuur” — “Fire is everywhere.”

Questions Over Warnings

The tragedy has sparked a bitter controversy over whether authorities adequately warned residents. Thomas-Wolf Verdonckt, who has traveled to Bédar to conduct his own investigation, told VRT NWS that his father received no warning from officials. “The people who died did not disobey any orders, because no orders were given. No information was provided. They only started trying to escape when the flames had almost reached them. It was their very last resort.”

Authorities claim they warned residents through church bells and door-to-door visits in central Bédar. But the victims’ homes were located outside the village center, in a dead-end street on the hillside. Crucially, their homes survived the fire largely intact, suggesting they would have survived had they stayed inside with proper guidance.

“According to all the testimonies I have heard, the authorities never actively warned my father,” Thomas-Wolf told HLN. “Not when he was at home. Not when he left by car. And presumably not when he was on the gravel path.”

Broader Context: A Continent on Fire

The Los Gallardos wildfire is among the deadliest in Spanish history, and experts warn it is part of a troubling trend. Western Europe was experiencing its third heatwave in two months when the fire broke out. Data from the European Forest Fire Information System shows double the usual area has burned for this time of year, with triple the number of fires.

“The Los Gallardos wildfire in Almería appears to have faced the worst possible combination: a point of ignition in a vast landscape of extremely dry vegetation, strong winds, and a nearby community that was unprepared,” Guillermo Rein, a fire scientist at Imperial College London, told The Guardian.

The hollowing out of rural Spain has alarmed fire experts. Aging populations and young people leaving farms for cities has led to vegetation overgrowth, while the political tendency to suppress fires rather than prevent them has encouraged large fuel build-ups. “The inertia of the two major processes that have brought us to the current situation — land abandonment and climate change — is enormous,” said Juan Picos, a forest fire scientist at the University of Vigo.

Aftermath and Accountability

Belgian Foreign Minister Maxime Prévot confirmed the three Belgian victims, offering his condolences. “Behind this news are lives cut short, and families and loved ones who have lost someone dear to them,” he said, as reported by The Brussels Times.

In Bédar, recovery continues. Power and water outages persist days after the fire. Local businesses have cancelled reservations through August. Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez and Minister Sara Aagesen have visited the disaster site. The last hotspots were extinguished on Tuesday.

Thomas-Wolf Verdonckt’s investigation continues, seeking answers about why warnings failed to reach his father and the other victims. The central question remains: could this tragedy have been prevented with better communication?

As southern Europe faces increasingly severe wildfire seasons driven by climate change, the lessons from Bédar may prove crucial for protecting vulnerable communities — especially expatriate populations who may face language barriers in receiving emergency warnings.