If a wildfire reaches your area: a checklist for Costa del Sol homeowners

This is not a substitute for the instructions of the emergency services. If 112, the Guardia Civil, the local police or an ES-Alert message tells you to do something, do that. This is what to do with the time you have around those instructions.

Understand the two orders

• Confinamiento (confinement): stay indoors, close everything, keep roads clear for the emergency services. Used when moving people would be more dangerous than sheltering them.
• Desalojo / evacuación: leave now, by the route you are given. Once your urbanisation is cleared you will not be allowed back in.

Before the season, not during it

• Clear vegetation to the legal distance and keep it cleared
• Know two ways out of your urbanisation, and drive them once
• Register a Spanish mobile number so ES-Alert reaches you
• Photograph the property and store the insurance policy where you can reach it from abroad
• Agree with a neighbour or keyholder who checks the house if you are away

In the hour before you leave

• Close every window, shutter, skylight and exterior door; close chimney dampers
• Move cushions, parasols, gas bottles, doormats and planters away from the façade
• Bring in or wet down anything combustible on terraces
• Leave exterior lights on so the house is visible through smoke
• Park facing out, fuel in the tank, keys in hand; take documents, medication, chargers, pets
• If you have an installed defence system, activate it before you drive away

What you cannot do from the road

Everything above ends at the moment you leave. From that point the house is defended by whatever is already wet, already closed, and already running. That is the gap our systems exist to fill: water on the roof and perimeter for as long as it is needed, on independent supply and independent power, with no one present.