A British couple have been named as two victims of the wildfires in Spain that have killed 13 people, as authorities race to use DNA to identify those who did not manage to escape the blaze.
Pete and Fran Gillam, who lived in Bédar, the village that bore the brunt of the wildfires on Thursday, are believed not to have survived..
Their daughter, Danielle Gillam-Kirton wrote on Facebook: “We are heartbroken to share that we have received confirmation from the police that Mum and Dad did not survive the fire. Thank you for all your love, support and prayers over the past few days. They have meant more to us than we can ever express.”
The family had been searching for the couple since Thursday. Gillam-Kirton’s mother had texted her at about 7pm that evening to say they were evacuating, but the couple had not been heard from since. Messages and calls failed to go through to either parent.
Relatives of those missing have been asked to go to the area’s civil office to provide DNA samples, as many of the victims are so badly burned that it is impossible to identify them without it.
Spanish authorities confirmed that a British couple was among the first victims identified on Monday, as well as a Spanish man and his British wife. Additionally, one national each from the US, France and Belgium have been identified as victims.
These were the first people identified out of 12 bodies found at the fire’s centre. Andalusian regional authorities said on Sunday that a 93-year-old British woman injured in the fire had died in hospital.
The authorities have cautioned that the number of missing people remains uncertain until autopsies and the identification of bodies are completed. Officials coordinating the identification work said on Sunday that 10 formal reports of people missing had been submitted.
The fire ripped through the picturesque village, which is home to many Britons , and moved at such speed that some were unable to escape. Burned-out cars litter the road leading out of Bédar and the authorities confirmed that the passengers in these vehicles burned alive in their cars as they tried to escape.
There are likely to be at least four more British victims, after bodies were found in the burnt-out shell of a right-hand-drive Honda Accord.
One British man died in his car while trying to rescue his pets, a friend of his said. Penelope Howe, 54, said her friend’s husband died when flames engulfed his car during the evacuation of the Los Gallardos area of Almería province.
Howe, who lives near Bédar, said: “She’s in deep shock. At one point he needed to stop and she spoke to him on the phone. He had got the cats and was trapped in the car. They were speaking together for the last few minutes. That was how it ended.”
A relentless heatwave has scorched much of Europe, including Spain, and been responsible for the tinderbox-like conditions that made the wildfire so vicious. Dry vegetation and high temperatures have been fuelling blazes from the Iberian peninsula to France. Scientists believe the fires have been worsened by the climate crisis, which has turbocharged the recent heatwaves.
“Here climate change is having a very big impact, and we are in a state of climate chaos with situations that are practically unheard of, exceptional and increasingly explosive,” the leader of Andalusia’s regional government, Juanma Moreno, said.
A Foreign Office spokesperson said: “Our thoughts are with all those impacted by the devastating wildfires in Spain. We are supporting British nationals affected and their families and remain in close contact with the Spanish authorities.”
