The Guardia Civil based in Nerja are investigating the circumstances behind an incident in which five cars were completely gutted by fire in the early ours of one morning.

The vehicles had been parked on an empty patch of land on Calle Puente Viejo, next to the roundabout and the Río Chíllar riverbed. A sixth car was also damaged.

It was locals in a nearby apartment block who alerted the emergency services around 00.30h. Several units from the Consorcio Provincial de Bomberos (CPB) arrived at the scene, as well as the Policía Local and the Guardia Civil.

However, such was the intensity of the blaze that the firemen were powerless to save the cars from complete destruction, but they did manage to prevent the fire spreading to other parked vehicles – there were half a dozen more.

The locals, however, were not impressed by how long the firemen took to get to the fire. Furthermore, one car owner could only lament having down-graded his insurance policy so that it no longer covered fire.

It’s not the first time that this kind of thing has happened in the area because in September 2010 a car and a van were destroyed by fire.

(News: Nerja, Axarquia, Costa del Sol, Malaga, Andalucia)