Fire at chemical plant in northeastern Spain keeps thousands indoors
BARCELONA, Spain — A fire at a chemical factory in northeastern Spain forced emergency services to issue health warnings to 150,000 local residents and stay-indoors orders for five nearby towns, authorities said Saturday.
Health services said that medics attended to four people who had reported breathing problems.
The fire broke out early on Saturday inside a warehouse at the plant near the town of Vilanova i la Geltrú. The warehouse housed 70 tons of chlorine for use in swimming pools, firefighters said.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
CBS News
2 hours ago
- CBS News
Fire destroys Crown Recycling facility in Calverton, Long Island
A large fire at a recycling plant in Calverton on Long Island Wednesday appears to be under control. The recycling plant was destroyed after the main building, considered a recycling transfer facility of Crown Recycling, caught fire. The call came in at around 2 a.m. Wednesday. More than 30 fire departments responded and worked on the blaze through the early morning hours. By 8 a.m., it was 80% contained. By noon, firefighters were still working on hot spots. The remains of a recycling plant in Calverton, Long Island after a fire on June 4, 2025. CBS News New York The Department of Environmental Conservation was also on the scene with decontamination equipment and is evaluating any off-site impacts from the smoke as well as water runoff. Riverside Police and Suffolk County Fire Rescue and Emergency Services advised residents to keep their windows closed until all of the smoke dissipates. According to its website, Crown Recycling Facility recycles scrap metal and disposes of solid waster and demolition debris, including asbestos. It had serviced Suffolk County and the five boroughs of New York City for more than 30 years. Officials are expected to give an update on the fire early Wednesday afternoon.
Bloomberg
2 hours ago
- Bloomberg
Canadian Wildfires Trigger Air-Quality Alerts in US
Canadian wildfires have triggered air-quality alerts in the US and the smoke could cause hazy skies in Europe. Safety advisories have been issued in six states. Hazy skies can be seen across the US Midwest. The Canadian wildfires have killed two people, forced over 25,000 people to evacuate, and shut down almost 350,000 barrels of daily heavy crude oil production. (Source: Bloomberg)
Gizmodo
4 hours ago
- Gizmodo
New Theory Suggests Meat Preservation, Not Cooking, Drove Early Fire Use
Hundreds of thousands—if not over a million—years ago, humans discovered how to make fire. This would prove to be one of the most important advancements in prehistoric human development, but the origin of this vital discovery remains a contentious topic among scholars. In a study published last month in the journal Frontiers, researchers from Tel Aviv University proposed a new theory for what prompted humans to start making and controlling fires: to protect their food from animals, and, most notably, to extend the prehistoric shelf life of their meat through smoking and drying. In other words, prehistoric speck. The scientists claim to be the first to propose this hypothesis, which aligns with a broader theory they've been developing: that humans' consumption of large animals—and then smaller ones when the megafauna became extinct—drove important prehistoric developments. 'The origins of fire use is a 'burning' topic among prehistory researchers around the world. It is generally agreed that by 400,000 years ago, fire use was common in domestic contexts—most likely for roasting meat, and perhaps also for lighting and heating,' co-author Ran Barkai explained in a statement. 'However there is controversy regarding the preceding million years, and various hypotheses have been put forward to explain why early humans began using fire. In this study, we sought to explore a new perspective on the issue.' Before around 400,000 years ago, early humans such as Homo erectus used fire only occasionally, 'in specific places and for special purposes,' co-author Miki Ben-Dor explained. Starting and maintaining a fire was an arduous process that required a 'compelling, energy-efficient motive.' To investigate this motive, Barkai and Ben-Dor studied previous research on all known prehistoric sites with evidence of fire use from between 1.8 million and 800,000 years ago, amounting to nine locations. Their analysis revealed that all nine sites featured an abundance of large animal remains, including elephants, hippopotamuses, and rhinoceroses. 'From previous studies, we know that these animals were extremely important to early human diets and provided most of the necessary calories. The meat and fat of a single elephant, for example, contain millions of calories, enough to feed a group of 20–30 people for a month or more,' Ben-Dor said. A successfully hunted elephant or hippopotamus was 'a kind of meat and fat 'bank' that needed to be protected and preserved for many days since it was coveted not only by predators but also by bacteria.' The researchers' analysis of the nine prehistoric sites, combined with their calculations of the potential 'energetic advantage' of preserving large game and observations of modern hunter-gatherer societies, culminated in the idea that humans were motivated to make fire to both protect their meat 'banks' from other animals and to smoke and dry them for long-term preservation. Once humans adopted fire to serve these means, they may have also used it for cooking 'at zero marginal energetic cost,' Barkai added. In other words, fire was initially used to smoke and dry meat, and only later repurposed for cooking. The researchers say their approach backs a bigger theory they've been developing—one that sees major prehistoric changes as reactions to shifts in diet. Early on, that meant hunting big animals, but as those species dwindled, people started relying more on smaller game for food. While we already knew that ancient humans, including the iconic Ötzi the Iceman and ancient Native Americans in southwest Florida, were curing and smoking meats thousands of years ago, the researchers' new theory predates this approach by hundreds of thousands of years, and contextualizes it within one of the most important prehistoric human developments known to science.
