• 5 million tires that were supposed to be recycled fueled suspected arson fire
• Ecologistas’ warnings of danger of disaster unheeded by regional authorities
Spanish environmental organisation Ecologistas en Acción says it had been warning authorities for years about the danger inherent in the huge tire dump near the town of Seseña in Toledo that erupted in fire over the weekend and have cautioned that a similar disaster could occur at the huge Castellanos de Villiquera tire dump in Salamanca if action is not taken.
Police believe arsonists set the fire at the tire dump adjacent to hundreds of homes in the municipality of Seseña. The fire erupted early Friday morning after two days of heavy rain and burned throughout the weekend, fueled by the estimated 5 million used tires at the 11-acre site, whose owners had repeatedly reneged on their pledge to local authorities to recycle the tires as required by law.
Ecologistas en Acción, which says it had warned the regional authorities in Madrid and Castilla-La Mancha about the environmental and health dangers posed by the illegal storage of the tires at Seseña, has pointed to similar dangers in other tire dumps around Spain, including the huge Castellanos de Villiquera dump in the Castilla-León province of Salamanca. In July 2015, a fire at a tire-recycling facility in the province of León took firefighters 22 days to extinguish.
► Read More in Spanish at Europa Press and La Crónica de Salamanca…
► Read More in English at El País …
