MADRID: A French man and one of his three children died after they jumped along with his wife off a 50-meter (164-foot ) cliff into the sea to flee a wildfire that forced them out of their car as they were returning home at the end of their vacation, officials said yesterday.
Two other people were also killed by the weekend fires in northeastern Spain that have burned 90 square kilometers (35 square miles).
The French mother and two children survived, as did about 150 more mostly French tourists who had to abandon their cars Sunday evening because of the wildfire, heading on foot down steep hillsides toward the beach in the border town of Portbou, said Deputy Mayor Elisabet Cortaba. Many suffered injuries ranging from broken bones to burns.
The French family of five got separated from the rest of the group on their way down and ended up at the cliff with no way out as the fire fanned by heavy winds approached them, Cortaba said.
"The fire started to close in on them and they couldn't climb up or climb down," she said. "The only way out was to jump into the sea."
The 60-year-old father died instantly after landing on rocks, and his 15-year-old daughter drowned, Cortaba said. The mother was in critical condition with a back injury, and the son and other daughter did not suffer life-threatening injuries. All were fished out of the sea by Portbou boaters and their identities were not released, Cortaba said.
The fires that broke out Sunday forced more than 1,400 people to stay the night in shelters and also killed two more people, officials said, including one man who had a heart attack while dousing flames around his home.
Train service in the region was suspended and several cross-border roads linking Barcelona with France were closed Sunday because of the advancing flames, regional government spokesman Felip Puig said Sunday.
Santiago Villa, mayor of Figueres, which houses the famous Salvador Dali museum, said he had ordered the city's 44,000 residents to stay indoors until further notice.
The fire service said in a statement that more than 80 teams had been deployed to combat the wildfires. The Interior Ministry said in a statement that it had sent three specially equipped aircraft and an emergency unit from Zaragoza to aid firefighters.
A north wind called the Tramontana is a regular feature of life in mountainous northeastern Spain and its strong gusts, which can often exceed 100 mph (160 kph), can spread fires rapidly across the heavily forested area.
Four dead as fire rages in Spain’s northeast
Four dead as fire rages in Spain’s northeast
India plans AI ‘data city’ on staggering scale
- ‘The data city is going to come in one ecosystem ... with a 100 kilometer radius’
NEW DELHI: As India races to narrow the artificial intelligence gap with the United States and China, it is planning a vast new “data city” to power digital growth on a staggering scale, the man spearheading the project says.
“The AI revolution is here, no second thoughts about it,” said Nara Lokesh, information technology minister for Andhra Pradesh state, which is positioning the city of Visakhapatnam as a cornerstone of India’s AI push.
“And as a nation ... we have taken a stand that we’ve got to embrace it,” he said ahead of an international AI summit next week in New Delhi.
Lokesh boasts the state has secured investment agreements of $175 billion involving 760 projects, including a $15 billion investment by Google for its largest AI infrastructure hub outside the United States.
And a joint venture between India’s Reliance Industries, Canada’s Brookfield and US firm Digital Realty is investing $11 billion to develop an AI data center in the same city.
Visakhapatnam — home to around two million people and popularly known as “Vizag” — is better known for its cricket ground that hosts international matches than cutting-edge technology.
But the southeastern port city is now being pitched as a landing point for submarine internet cables linking India to Singapore.
“The data city is going to come in one ecosystem ... with a 100 kilometer radius,” Lokesh said. For comparison, Taiwan is roughly 100 kilometers wide.
Lokesh said the plan goes far beyond data connectivity, adding that his state had “received close to 25 percent of all foreign direct investments” to India in 2025.
“It’s not just about the data centers,” he explained while outlining a sweeping vision of change, with Andhra Pradesh offering land at one US cent per acre for major investors.
