Father and daughter leap to death to escape Spanish wildfire

A French father and daughter holidaying in northeastern Spain leaped off a seaside cliff to their deaths in a desperate attempt to escape a wildfires that were still raging Monday evening.

A firefighter tries to extinguish a wildfire in Ller near La Junquera (Girona), close to the Spanish-French border.

Three other family members survived the 65ft fall at a creek near the town of Portbou on the Spain-France border. The mother was in a critical condition yesterday with a back injury, while the son and other daughter escaped with minor injuries.

The unnamed 60-year old man and his 15-year old daughter were among three French nationals to die in the fires which broke out on Sunday near the town of La Junquera in northeastern Spain near the French border and rapidly spread in the region of Alt Emporda, whipped up by 55 miles-an-hour winds. A Spaniard was also killed in the blaze.

The encroaching flames forced the family of five and about 150 other tourists out of their cars on Sunday night as they drove home to France. Amateur footage showed the group scrambling down steep hillsides toward the beach to escape the blaze.

Eyewitness Xavier Mallol, 26, a computer engineer, saw three of the family members, but was powerless to help.
“I saw them descend, a group of three people. They went in the wrong direction and I saw them jump,” he said.
“Instead of heading towards the village, they turned left to the side of the sea and they became trapped. There were three of them. The father was the first to jump, then a woman followed him.”
Another French tourist Dominique Jau, who was watching from below, said: “She jumped, she hit the rocks and fell into the water.”
“From where they jumped you would have to project yourself about one metre to reach the sea, they probably did not jump far enough and they hit the rocks below,” said Portbou mayor Jose Luis Salas-Mallol.
The flames claimed two other victims: a 75-year-old Spaniard died of a heart attack as he watched his house consumed by flames in the town of Llers and a 64-year-old Frenchman who suffered 80 percent burns when his car was engulfed in flames.
Another 23 people were injured, including eight who remain in hospital.
Smoke from the blaze, which has so far ravaged up to 32,000 acres of land, reached Barcelona, 90 miles south of the border. Some 150,000 people were confined to their homes to avoid smoke inhalation.
Hundreds of firefighters, backed by water-bombing planes continued to fight the flames Monday. These were under control on the French side of the border but Felip Puig, the interior minister of Catalonia, said the fire on the Spanish side remained “out of control”.
It was likely caused by a cigarette butt or small explosive device that caught fire due to “recklessness or negligence”, he added.