It is a “wild” and “erratic” fire, according to the definition used yesterday by the president of the Island Council, Rosa Dávila. At times, the flames unfolded in a column so virulent that it has been capable of creating its own microclimate and upsetting the forecasts of meteorologists. And, above all, it is being a ravenous fire. The fire that has ravaged the island of Tenerife since Tuesday 15 is already the one that has devastated the largest area of all those that have been declared in Spain so far this year, according to data provided by the Ministry for Ecological Transition and the Demographic Challenge.
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On the Canary Island there are already 11 municipalities affected. The affected area amounted to 13,800 hectares at noon on Monday, according to data from the Ministry for the Ecological Transition and the Demographic Challenge. In other words, it covers 6.7% of the total area of the largest of the Canary Islands —the metropolitan area of Barcelona barely occupies 10,000 hectares. Tenerife is also home to the largest forest mass in the archipelago, with 50,000 hectares of wooded area (with a high prevalence of very old laurel forests), with which the llamas have affected about 27.6% of the total. The perimeter of the fire covers 90 kilometers.
Asturias also stands out on the black list of territories affected by the fire, a community that experienced a devastating spring: 12 fires burned some 17,000 hectares of its territory in spring.
The news, yes, begins to be more benign for the population of the island of Tenerife. The emergency experienced an improvement as of early Monday morning. “We see the situation much calmer,” assured the president of the Canary Islands, Fernando Clavijo, in statements to EL PAÍS. The Emergency Director of the Cabildo de Gran Canaria, Federico Grillo from Tenerife, who has moved to the island to collaborate in the extinction, stresses “with caution” that the fire can probably be considered stabilized shortly. This would save important treasures such as the Teide National Park, which also houses the Izaña Atmospheric Research Center, belonging to Aemet.
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Evolution of the Tenerife fire
The fire started last Tuesday the 15th at night. The affected area, 6.7% of the total island, has advanced very quickly due to the orography and vegetation of the area.
National Park
of Teide
Source: Government of the Canary Islands, EFFIS
and own elaboration.
RODRIGO SILVA – JORGE MARZO / THE COUNTRY
Evolution of the Tenerife fire
The fire started last Tuesday the 15th at night. The affected area, 6.7% of the total island, has advanced very quickly due to the orography and vegetation of the area.
National Park
of Teide
Source: Government of the Canary Islands, EFFIS
and own elaboration.
RODRIGO SILVA – JORGE MARZO / THE COUNTRY
Evolution of the Tenerife fire
The fire started last Tuesday the 15th at night. The affected area, 6.7% of the total island, has advanced very quickly due to the orography and vegetation of the area.
National Park
of Teide
Source: Government of the Canary Islands, EFFIS and own calculations.
RODRIGO SILVA – JORGE MARZO / THE COUNTRY
The evolution of the flames has allowed the return home of the first residents evicted in the municipality of Candelaria and most of those evacuated in Arafo (the two enclaves where the flames began last week). As of this Tuesday, “depending on the evolution of the fire”, according to sources from the Canary Islands government, the relocation of the evicted in La Esperanza (municipality of El Rosario) will be evaluated.
Throughout the night 379 people have worked. With dawn, the 22 available aerial means have been progressively incorporated, two of them in coordination tasks, which will focus on carrying out discharges in the most complicated areas of the fire. Thus, throughout this Tuesday, 275 firefighters, 115 security personnel and 40 people dedicated to logistics tasks will work on the ground. The objective, as explained by the technicians of the regional Executive, has been to consolidate the entire northern part of the emergency, which will make it possible to disembark forcefully, both with land and air forces, in the Cho Marcial rock area (southern part of the fire , in the municipality of Arafo) and thus prevent the flames from advancing and causing new evacuations in the municipalities of Fasnia and Arico.
Night view of the fire in Tenerife this Sunday. NACHO DOCE (REUTERS)
speed and virulence
Between the night of Tuesday the 15th and Thursday the 17th, the fire spread rapidly in an advance plagued by successive turns in different directions, an “extremely erratic” fire, according to the president of the Cabildo, Rosa Dávila. The emergency in those first hours made it “ungovernable,” according to Federico Grillo, who has come to compare it to “an avalanche.”
“That ran like wildfire,” recalls Clavijo for EL PAÍS. “There has been a lot of heat, and all of that generates fuel. Everything is very dry, there is little relative humidity and a lot of wind”. All this, in an intricate orography of abrupt ravines that follow one another up to Teide. “That was the perfect storm,” he says. “Of course, whoever caused this fire did so with full knowledge of the facts and with a clear intention.”
It was in those first moments when the embers came into play, the small and extremely light particles of inflamed matter that come off a burning body and that when they cool down end up turning into ash. But first, they are a danger in a wooded area in the middle of a heat wave. In the Corona Forestal Natural Park, which houses the area affected by the fire, the Canarian pine also predominates. “With the fire, the pine cones in the pine forests explode like cotufas (canarianism of the western islands to name popcorn), and spread incandescently. That’s why, wherever it went, it caught fire.”
The rapidity of propagation made the first hours extremely difficult. “The first two nights were very screwed up,” the president stated explicitly. “When we arrived and saw the magnitude, we began to mobilize resources, to remove people from permits, but it takes until everything is organized in a coherent way,” he explains. Little by little, resources began to arrive from other islands and the peninsula. But the fire spread in very complicated hours. “That’s why, for the first 24 hours, we had to deal with it with the means you have here.”
The virulence of the flames caused an added difficulty. “As if that were not enough, all the weather forecasts failed during the first two nights,” because the fire columns were so strong that they generated their own microclimate. “That’s why the models predicted that the wind would blow from the southeast, and you got there, you planned the operation and then it was northeast.”
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