The Spanish archipelago of the Canaries is ravaged by fires, accentuated by complex weather conditions. These have allowed the flames to spread in an uncontrolled and unpredictable way, in particular on the island of Tenerife, where 4,000 hectares have been destroyed, over a perimeter of 42 kilometers, since Tuesday August 15. 48 hours after the start of the fire, the situation begins to “normalize”. More than 250 firefighters, 16 aircraft and more than 200 members of the Special Military Unit of the Ministry of Defense (UME) had to be mobilized on the spot.
“Tonight the fire and weather behaved ‘normally’. On the previous two nights, we had observed quite unusual winds, temperatures and even behavior of the fire, “said Fernando Clavijo, president of the Canary Islands regional government, at a press conference on Friday morning.
The island has seen 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 40 years. The blaze created “its own weather pattern,” authorities said, with a cloud of smoke several miles high.
“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.
