World Cup goalie Iker Casillas joins forest fire volunteers in his home town

FORMER Spain football team captain and World Cup goalkeeper Iker Casillas is helping tackle a giant forest fire in Castilla y León and rake up withered scrubland to prevent flare-ups where it has not yet reached.

Casillas, 40, was born and grew up in Navalacruz (Ávila province), his parents still live there and he has a house in the village.

When Navalacruz's surrounding countryside went up in flames, the ex-Real Madrid and FC Porto player sent messages of support to local residents, and has since gone 'home' to lend a hand.

Forest fire-tracking software Copernicus, programmed to provide extremely accurate geo-spatial data and used by emergency response teams, is showing a total area destroyed so far of 56,150 acres.

The blaze is on Level 2 on a scale running from 0 to 3, with 3 being maximum danger, but authorities assure no residential areas are under threat.

Iker posted a picture on Tuesday afternoon (above) of a team of local helpers bent over in a field cutting back overgrown weeds, captioned: “Proud of my people.”

He has been uploading pictures of the wide-scale operation to beat the worst forest fire in Castilla y León in his lifetime, with messages praising the 'people who know most about what to do and who guided those of us who hadn't a clue how to hold a hoe', and, “things like this make you feel proud that everyone knows us – although, being humble people, we'd rather have stayed in the background and for this never to have happened.”

Highlight what 'good people' his 'friends from Navalacruz' are, Iker is on a team of over 100 local volunteers helping to build fire-breaks to contain the flames.