Granada is suffering from a bout of arson with 15 rubbish containers being torched in the first half of this month.

Yet this is nothing new as 165 rubbish containers have been damaged or destroyed by fire so far this year, according to the cleaning company, Inagra.

The cost of replacing them has ascended to 198,000 euros because each one costs 1,200 euros.

If we go back to 2015 we can see that the city of Granada lost 60 side-loading hoppers, costing the municipal coffers 64,000 euros. This means that in just the first six months of this present year vandals have cost the city around three times as much as during the whole of 2015.

In court, culprits can face prison sentences, or in the cases of minors, being sent to a juvenile detention home. However, catching somebody in the act is very unlikely – normally a neighbour in a nearby dwelling is woken by the noise, smell and glow of the fire,so they contact the authorities, by which time the culprits have long fled the scene.

Article 346 belonging to the Criminal Law Code includes sentences of between ten and 20 years imprisonment when the fire has caused a danger to life  and between one and three years plus a fine if it involves the destruction of public property.

Hopper fires are not always acts of arson but can be caused by somebody carelessly throwing in ashes from a fire, thinking that they’re out.

A Granada provincial court sentenced a youth from Motril to eight months in a correction centre for minors after he was found guilty of burning several rubbish containers one summer’s night, several years back. In his defence, the youth had claimed that he did it because “he was bored.”

Finally, yesterday three families had to be evacuated by the local fire service after somebody set light to wheelie bins inside the main entrace to the block of flats. This occurred in Huércal-Overa (Almería) and required that the inhabitants of the affected flats be rescued using an extending ladder.

(News: City & Metropolitan Area, Granada, Andalucia)