The forest fire that started on the night of August 15 on Mount Arafo, on the island of Tenerife, has begun to behave more normally, unlike the last few nights when weather conditions prevented resources from working with normality due to the "unusual" behavior of the flames. Until this midnight the flames were still uncontrolled in these areas of the island:
The fire in Tenerife already affects 3,797 hectares in a perimeter of 41.9 kilometers. After this first night of what is considered normal behavior, there are good prospects in El Rosario, but the northern slope is concerned, where efforts will be concentrated today to prevent the fire from reaching homes.
The president of the Canary Islands, Fernando Clavijo, stated this Friday that last night was the first in which the fire behaved "with the normality of other fires" registered in the archipelago. Until now this fire had behaved in an unusual way and created its own meteorology. The power of the flames in some areas became such that aerial means could not act, since the water evaporated.
The fire already covers an area of nine municipalities on the island - there are some 8,000 people evacuated or confined and the Canarian government also cut off access to Teide - and reinforcements continue to arrive from the forest fire reinforcement brigades (BRIF) from the peninsula and from other islands. In this way, the continuity in the endowment of the teams is guaranteed, where today 265 troops will work by land, and their relief to rest.
The objective is to reinforce this area if La Esperanza is stabilized today, where there will foreseeably be flares produced by slow combustion, not by new sources but by the wind that will throw oxygen into the area and therefore the population should not be alarmed, he said. peg.
The head of the Forest Service of the Cabildo de Tenerife, Pedro Martínez, has agreed that the day is "quieter" for the media, but has pointed out that the perimeter "is still active" and reactivations are expected throughout the day, so that you have to be "cautious", while explaining that work has been done at night to "close" the area of La Esperanza that extends from Las Lagunetas to the El Rayo track.
The area that causes most concern for the means of extinction is La Orotava and its upper parts, Aguamansa and Pinolere, where the defensive strategy of the infrastructures has been established, although the advance of the flames is very slow. The problem in this area is that they are almost vertical cut slope operations that pose a great deal of risk to the operators, which is why today it will be decided to drop retardant liquid from an airplane.
In addition, Pedro Martínez has pointed out that the Santa Úrsula front has been opened "a little more", where there are very deep ravines and the aerial means have not had the opportunity to "attack".
For her part, the meteorologist and adviser to the Cabildo de Tenerife Victoria Palma has indicated that the weather conditions are unfavorable except for the wind, which blows lightly from the East and has cleared the skies in the capital of Tenerife and La Laguna.
