Wildfire evacuation in Spain: the bag and the alerts

How the order reaches you: ES-Alert and 112

An order to leave comes from the authorities, and only from them.⁵ It can reach you as an ES-Alert on your phone; the radio, television and the emergency services’ social media carry the rest.¹ The bag below is packed for a fire in Spain; what several countries’ official lists agree on is in the go bag list.

ES-Alert, Spain’s public warning system, reaches every phone in an area through the mobile network: no app, no registration.¹ The message fills the screen with a tone and vibration that sound even on silent, and stays until you acknowledge it. The phone has to be on, with 4G or 5G. Android 11 or later and iOS 15.6 or later show alerts correctly; Android 8 or older gets none.¹ The top level, Alerta de Protección Civil, can’t be switched off.¹

Alerts are written in Spanish. The centre can add a second language, usually English, and phones set to another language then show that text, though some show both.¹ So learn the words the Junta’s own advice uses for the two orders, and for where to go:⁷

• evacuación: leave the area by the route given
• confinamiento: stay indoors, doors and windows shut
• punto de encuentro: the meeting point you’re told to go to

When one arrives, read it to the end, tell the people around you and do what it says; then keep the radio on.¹ A drill says so in the message.¹

To report a fire or a column of smoke, call 112.⁶ In Andalusia the line answers in Spanish, English, French, German and Arabic. Have two things ready: what has happened and where, with the road and kilometre point, or the estate or track name in the countryside.² WhatsApp to 112 is only for sending your location when you don’t know where you are; the emergency itself goes by a call.²

The bag, per person

Pack one bag for each person. Every line is on Protección Civil’s list or the Spanish Red Cross’s, and the list prints, for the inside of the cupboard door.

Staying in through a power cut or a storm takes a longer list, with three days of water: that’s the 72-hour kit list. This one is for walking out of the door.

Before you close the door

The order of the steps is the one the Junta de Andalucía’s emergency agency gives; closing up the house is the Spanish Red Cross’s advice.

Step by step

1. Take the bag

   Documents and your usual medicines first.⁷

2. Close up, if there’s time

   Shut doors and windows, lower the blinds, switch off the electricity and the gas.⁵

3. Leave by the route you’re given

   And help anyone who can’t move quickly on their own.⁷

4. Take your animals

   If you can’t, don’t leave them shut in.⁷

5. Go straight to the meeting point

   Without delay.⁷

If you’re in a car near a fire, close the windows and turn the lights on. Move away from it by the sides or across ground with no vegetation, and never into a ravine or a hollow.⁷ Staying at home is for when the authorities decide it, or when the danger makes leaving unsafe.⁸

If your house backs onto the hill

Andalusian law draws a 400-metre zone of influence round every piece of forest land,⁹ and anyone with a house there has preventive duties. Whole municipalities on this coast, Estepona and Casares among them, are listed in full as Zonas de Peligro, danger zones.¹⁰ In those zones an urbanización (a housing estate) must have a self-protection plan that covers evacuation, drawn up by its owners and approved by the town hall.⁹ Every municipality in a danger zone must also have a local emergency plan for forest fires under the Plan INFOCA, Andalusia’s forest-fire plan.¹² Ask your administrator for the estate’s plan, and for the meeting point it names.

Around the house, the Junta asks for:⁸

• no vegetation or anything that burns within 3 metres of the walls
• fuel tanks and woodpiles more than 10 metres away
• no hedges of cypress or other conifers
• doors and windows that close tight, and a roof clear of dry vegetation
• a hose and water that reach every side of the plot

Cut back branches over the roof or near the chimney, too.⁶ For estates, the Junta’s advice is a firebreak of at least 15 metres round the edge, at least two roads in and out, and a residents’ meeting every year before summer to go through the plan.⁸ The high-risk period runs, usually, from 1 June to 15 October.⁷

Food for the bag

This bag carries one day of food, for the way out and the first hours after it. The Spanish lists name tins, energy bars, biscuits and nuts.³ A day of those from the supermarket shelf, with weights and prices, is in a 24-hour ration from the supermarket.

Our One-Day Ration is a porridge, two Large mains and a rice pudding: 2,321 kcal in 570 g. The pouches need 1.2 l of water and no kitchen, and they can also be made with cold water, 20–30 minutes depending on the meal: Chicken & Rice takes about 20 minutes, Lentils & Chorizo about 30 minutes. Made cold, the meat stays a little firmer and a little liquid may be left. That water goes in the bag on top of the 1.5 litres to drink.

From our range

One-Day Ration

One day of food in 4 pouches. It takes water, not a kitchen.

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Where it lives, and when to check it

Keep the bag where everyone at home knows to find it.⁴ By the front door, or in the hall cupboard, works better than the storeroom.

Spain’s 2025 family guide asks for the bag to be kept ready and its contents checked once a year;³ the UK’s Be Ready suggests a reminder every six months to check dates.¹¹ May suits it here, before the high-risk period begins: charge the power bank, swap the batteries, check the medicines and the dates, and update the copies of your documents. Our pouches keep at least 12 months from the day they’re sealed, so read the date on each at that check and eat the ones that are due.

Staying in through a power cut is a different job, and the fridge and freezer side of it is in how long the fridge and freezer keep food in a power cut; the reasons behind both lists are in what the EU and Spain ask for in an emergency kit.