The fire that devastated nearly 4,000 hectares on the island of Tenerife, in the Spanish Canary archipelago, off the west coast of Africa, has started to normalize, said Friday August 18 Fernando Clavijo , the president of the regional government of the Canary Islands, during a press conference. The fire had been evolving in an uncontrolled and unpredictable manner for forty-eight hours due to complex weather conditions.
This forest fire, which started on Tuesday evening, burned around 3,800 hectares, according to the latest report from the authorities, and mobilized more than 250 firefighters, 16 aircraft, but also more than 200 members of the Special Military Unit. of the Ministry of Defence, which intervenes on the most worrying fires in Spain.
“Tonight the fire and weather behaved normally. The previous two nights we had observed quite unusual winds, temperatures and even fire behavior,” Clavijo explained. However, it has not yet been stabilized and the authorities will study in the afternoon the possibility of lifting the confinement of La Esperanza, a locality near the northern flank of the fire, where the efforts of the firefighters are concentrated.
“The humidity will drop again”
About 3,000 people have been evacuated and nearly 4,000 confined since the outbreak of the fire, while the Teide National Park, popular with tourists, has been closed since Thursday evening.
The cloud of smoke, visible in satellite images, has passed the summit of Teide, a volcano which overlooks the island and culminates at 3,715 meters above sea level, while the main foci of the fire are located on wooded hills in about twenty kilometers below, near several villages.
The island has experienced larger fires in terms of burned area, especially in 2007, but the weather conditions and topography of this one made Fernando Clavijo say on Thursday that the archipelago was facing its “most complicated fire”. for forty years.
The blaze created “its own weather pattern,” authorities said. “We picked up some humidity in the air on Thursday evening, but we know that from today it will drop again”, in particular due to a rise in temperatures, said the meteorologist Vicky Palma during the press conference.
If the intensity of the flames subsided overnight, Forestry Service Chief Pedro Martinez warned that during the hottest hours, fire pits could “reactivate.”