Pressmediaofindia
Related Articles
18-08-2023
MADRID: Tenerife wildfires are burning ‘out of control’ forcing officials to close off a top tourist area and evacuate more villages and holiday homes.
The blaze broke out in a mountainous national park on the Spanish island on Wednesday and spread to 4,450 acres in 24 hours as firefighters struggled to contain the blaze amid difficult terrain conditions.
The fire’s perimeter expanded to 14 miles of dry woodland covering both flanks of steep ravines near the Mount Teide volcano, Spain’s highest peak hampering access to the area.
‘The fire is out of control… the outlook is not positive,’ the region’s leader, Fernando Clavijo, told an evening news conference in Tenerife’s capital, Santa Cruz.
‘Our goal for tonight is defensive, so that the fire does not continue its advance. We will carry out operations to protect residents’ property,’ he added.
Authorities deployed 14 aircraft and a combined 250 firefighters and military personnel. A water-bombing seaplane arrived on Wednesday afternoon from the mainland and two others were expected on Thursday morning.
Vicky Palma, a wildfire adviser to the Tenerife council, told Canarias Radio the expected drop in temperatures at night to around 20 degrees Celsius (68 Fahrenheit) would likely increase the strength of winds in the area.
The island’s emergency services chief Pedro Martinez said: ‘We don’t rule out that tomorrow we’ll again see intense fire activity’.
Rosa Davila, head of the Tenerife council, said all access to the mountains on the island, including tourist-favourite Mount Teide, has been closed off.
‘We are doing this to prevent any incidents,’ she said.
Canarias Radio said some 150 people have been evacuated so far from half a dozen villages in the sparsely populated area in the island’s northeast, made up mostly of farms and holiday homes.
The villages of Arrate, Chivisaya, Media Montana, Ajafona and Las Lagunetas were evacuated on Wednesday morning as a precaution because of thick smoke.
Local authorities have cut off roads leading to the mountains on the northeastern part of the island.
‘We ask that the population respect all these cuts,’ said the head of the archipelago’s civil protection service, Montserrat Roman.
A dog shelter said it had preventively evacuated some of its most vulnerable dogs and those with respiratory problems so that they would not be affected by the smoke.
Tenerife’s two airports were operating normally, the public broadcaster added, citing Spanish airport operator Aena. (Int’l Monitoring Desk)
