Hundreds of dead storks appeared between Thursday and Saturday in the Manzanares River, near Perales del Río and La Mararañosa, in the municipality of Getafe. Both banks of the river presented a desolate appearance since the local police raised the alarm on Wednesday when they noticed the avalanche of bodies floating in the water.
“What we saw was terrible,” summarizes one of the firefighters who these days was in the water removing storks, but who prefers not to say his name. “I removed around 250 dead storks. The previous team between 50 and 100 and the next day around a hundred more were removed,” he explains. “It was a frightening picture. Most of the storks had died those days, but others were decomposing or had been bitten by other animals,” he adds. Faced with such images, the Government of the Community of Madrid remains silent, even though ministry sources have confirmed to this newspaper that it is an epidemic of avian flu.
The order that the firefighters of Arganda received, with the support of those of Aranjuez and Alcalá de Henares, was to remove the birds that appeared in the water, leave them on the banks of the river and the forest guards would take care of removing them and this is what happened on Thursday, Friday and Saturday.
The firefighters’ fear is not knowing the results of the analyzes carried out. Although they use official TYBEK suits, similar to the IPIS suits used by health workers, there is no tracking of those who have been in contact with the birds and there is no certainty about what measures have been implemented beyond removing the animals.
From the Department of the Environment of the Community of Madrid, they point out that analyzes have confirmed that it is “an avian flu epidemic of low pathogenicity, which does not require a declaration to the ministry.”
On its website, the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food differentiates cases of avian flu between high and low pathogenicity. However, its description does not coincide with the diagnosis made by the Community. According to the ministry, an outbreak of low pathogenicity “causes mild illnesses” in animals, for which “it even goes unnoticed, even without showing symptoms”. In contrast, highly pathogenic avian influenza “causes severe clinical signs and high mortality rates,” as is the case in Manzanares. Photographs show dozens of animals crowded together and spread out on either side of the river.
The Community of Madrid emphasizes that in the event of an avian influenza epidemic, for which it does not distinguish between high and low pathogenicity, “the risk of contagion in the general population is very low. Only in very exceptional cases has the transmission to humans of a strain of the avian influenza virus (H5N1) been observed, after close contact with infected animals or contaminated environments, since it has been shown to be very ineffective in the transmission from birds to people. The explanation, however, does not convince those who have been in contact with the animals and who have raised their voices: “There are hundreds of stork corpses that have been collected and the staff has not been officially informed of the results of the analysis, although it is a very sensitive intervention because it is a biological risk”, denounces Israel Navieso, of the firefighters’ union. Navieso denounces that the protocol requires monitoring those who participate in these tasks and ignores what is being done with the mountain of storks collected.
From the Community of Madrid they respond that they are taken to an incinerator in Colmenar Viejo, although some experts recommend using quicklime for these cases.
The municipality of Getafe is just as unaware of the scale of the problem as the firefighters, who were the first to sound the alarm and had no official information on the results of the analyzes carried out. On Friday, Mayor Sara Hernández sent a letter to Councilman Carlos Novillo to express her concern, but so far there has been no response. The area where the majority of the storks appeared is next to a carilbici and is a common walking area for walkers with their dogs.
Both the Community and Getafe believe that the proximity of the Valdemingomez incinerator could be the cause of a massive contagion of birds.
Avian flu in storks, as a transmitting animal, is an increasingly common problem in Spain, which is spreading in the Iberian Peninsula at the same rate as birds. In August, a case of avian flu was detected in a stork in Girona. A month later, at the end of September, several cases were detected in Doñana and, in November, the appearance of 20 dead specimens in Córdoba triggered all the alerts. However, there are hundreds of them that have appeared in a few days without any authority having said a word. The Getafe organization Ecologists in Action requested explanations from the City Hall and the Community of Madrid.
Avian flu has become one of the ghosts hanging over the Spanish food industry. In recent years, epidemics and infections of avian influenza A (H5N1) have increased and affected and caused the death of many domestic and wild birds in several regions, particularly in Antarctica.
Last month, the Community of Madrid had to sacrifice almost half a million chickens to control the largest outbreak of avian flu and the first in poultry recorded in the region this year. It was a laying hen farm in Valdemoro in which more than 800,000 euros were spent to combat this highly contagious and fatal disease for animals. The Tragsatec company took on the task of carrying out these tasks, stopping the spread of the flu throughout Madrid and its surrounding areas. The order included the destruction, disinfection and burial of nearly half a million chickens from this Valdemoro macro farm, the Ministry of Environment, Agriculture and Interior said.
Spain has become one of the continent’s hotspots for the spread of bird flu. From summer to November, around 14 outbreaks were detected on poultry farms, affecting more than 2.5 million animals, including slaughter and death. The communities hardest hit include Castile and León, Andalusia, Castile-La Mancha, Extremadura, Madrid and other regions where wild bird migratory routes converge. The situation is about to be controlled, but its effects have caused great losses to producers and the price of eggs has skyrocketed, which increased by 22% last year and is the food whose price has increased the most in Spain.
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