The fire declared last Monday in Las Peñas de Riglos has already burned more than 18,400 hectares between the Hoya de Huesca and La Jacetania, leaving its municipalities surrounded by a landscape that their neighbors hardly recognize. One of the towns that has seen the consequences of the fire up close has been Ena, where the flames have advanced for days through the mountains and have forced its inhabitants to evacuate. Only a few people have stayed inside; among them, Luis Sanclemente and the mayor of the district, who have accompanied the extinguishing teams since practically the beginning of the emergency.
Luis is a technical architect, he is partially based in Jaca and has known these mountains since he was a child. When the evacuation order came, he decided to stay after talking to those in charge working on the ground. His knowledge of roads, ravines and accesses could be useful. «From the first moment I had no hesitation in staying to help in any way I could and to defend this town in which I and my three previous generations have grown up,» he explains to Aragón Digital.
What came next is difficult to condense into a few days. «I think it has been the closest thing to a war that I have been able to live,» he sums up. Helicopters, planes, sirens, vehicles constantly circulating on the runways and practically sleepless nights have marked days in which the fire has come to threaten Ena from three different directions.
«THE FIRE HAS ATTACKED US FOR THREE DAYS ON THREE DIFFERENT FRONTS»
Luis was one of the first to warn that the flames were heading towards Ena. «We have been there from minute zero,» he recalls. Since then, the situation has been constantly changing. «In Ena specifically, the fire has attacked us for three days on three different fronts, from the north, from the west and from the south. They have been very intense days».
His work and that of the mayor of the district was not limited to remaining aware of what was happening from the houses. Both participated in meetings during shift changes and accompanied members of the UME, Infoar and the BRIF on the ground. The objective was to show accesses and prevent the teams from entering dead-end areas. «There are a lot of mousetraps in this mountain,» warns Luis.
This circumstance has turned the knowledge of the inhabitants of Ena and the farmers into another tool within the operation. «They have come from places that they did not know anything about and do not know the fields, they do not know the accesses,» he says. The collaboration has also been extended to residents of Centenero and Botaya, where some people also remained on the ground. «Without the people of the area and without the farmers, this would have been much more complicated, because they are mountains that you have to know,» he says.
Likewise, Luis insists that working on the fire «has been devastating, because you worked all day long, fighting, helping as much as humanly possible you could,» he says. «There have been moments when that adrenaline has made you push forward, fight, give everything, and there have been times when with the mayor himself and even with other media that you have broken down, there have even been tears, there has been laughter.»
AN EMPTY PEOPLE MARKED BY «RESIGNATION»
While Luis and the mayor remained in Ena, the rest of the neighbors followed the evolution from outside. Contact was maintained through WhatsApp groups. «They have shown us at all times an incombustible support,» he explains. Some neighbors even offered to return and relieve those who remained there when they found that they were exhausted.
The situation today is very different from that of those critical moments. Peace of mind, however, comes at a price that is difficult to assume. According to Luis, around 90% of Mount Ena is burned. «Now how can you not be calm if you know that fire can no longer attack you from anywhere,» he says. «So it’s a bit of resignation.»
Sunday night’s storm provided a small respite after so many days of tension. «We celebrate it like a tribe from the Amazon when it sees rain,» he jokes. Now the work is also focused on repairing with bulldozers and motor graders some tracks punished by the continuous passage of vehicles.
THE RETURN TO A LANDSCAPE THAT IS NO LONGER THE SAME
Ena will still have to wait for the relocation. Its geographical location forces, as Luis explains, extreme caution. The access road is narrow and ends in the town itself, something that could complicate a new evacuation if any problems appear. When the time comes to return, your neighbors will find a very different image from the one they left in a hurry. «This, of course, is not forgotten and when people begin to return to the village, we will remember again and cry together,» Luis acknowledges.
Then it will be time to analyse what has happened and how to deal with fires of these characteristics. Luis demands that those who live and work in rural areas be listened to when it comes to managing the forests. «Farmers, ranchers, hunters, we know where there may be a problem, we know where we have to clean up,» he says.
It also focuses on another problem that during the emergency has ceased to be a daily inconvenience to become a risk: the lack of coverage. «Today in rural areas they continue to exist and generate many communication problems, and in these cases, in the face of an emergency, not being able to have the means to give the warning at the right time,» he laments.
Ena is still waiting. The houses are still standing, but much of the landscape that surrounded them has disappeared under fire. After days defending the town, Luis knows that the next difficult scene will come when his neighbors cross the entrance road again and see with their own eyes what happened. As he himself summarises after more than a week between smoke, emergency vehicles and flames, «this, of course, is not forgotten«.
