The forest fire that broke out last Thursday in the north of Tenerife already affects five municipalities: especially Los Realejos, where it started after 10 a.m., but also in La Orotava (a town of 41,800 inhabitants with important urban and agricultural centers), San Juan from the Rambla, La Guancha and Icod de los Vinos.
The flames have already scorched some 2,700 hectares of wooded area in a perimeter of 27 kilometers, as reported on Sunday afternoon by the Security Councilor of the Government of the Canary Islands, Julio Pérez.
The weather this Sunday has favored extinctions.
For this reason, the emergency teams have worked at a forced pace before the new rise in temperatures and the strong gusts of wind of more than 30 kilometers per hour for this Monday foreseen by the State Meteorological Agency (Aemet).
"A weather that will not be favorable", has sentenced the head of the Civil Protection service, Montserrat Román.
The president of the insular government, Ángel Víctor Torres, had explained on Sunday morning that the "prognosis is not bad", and ruled out, for the moment, new preventive evictions.
The evacuees remain at 584, all of them residents of Los Realejos and La Orotava, who are housed in relatives' houses and in hotels.
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The fire is spreading on three fronts, fundamentally, according to Montserrat Román.
"The western flank [which touches Icod de los Vinos] is advancing quite slowly," she asserted, as is the southern one [through which it entered the Teide National Park on Friday].
"The most complicated is the one on the east wing, in the Chanajiga Recreational Area, complicated by the difficult access of land media," she explained.
"We have the Tigaiga hillside caught with tweezers," acknowledged Pedro Martínez, spokesman for Brifor (acronym for forestry brigades, the fire prevention and extinction operation of the Cabildo Insular de Tenerife).
On Sunday night, a total of 130 ground troops are scheduled to work in that area adjacent to the recreational area.
The impossibility of access by land by the infantry means that the work is being concentrated on the 13 seaplanes and helicopters used in the emergency.
These devices have discharged 817,636 liters of water on Saturday alone, between the helicopters and the FOCA seaplane, as revealed by the Canary Islands Security Councilor, who ventured that this Sunday "easily" they will have been able to exceed the million liters of water discharged by joining a second FOCA and one more helicopter for the extinction work. "The haze is complicating visibility, and the temperature is going to rise and the humidity is going down, which is not going to be favourable," warned Román.
The president of the Canary Islands has recalled in this regard that warnings are activated on all the islands due to high temperatures and that they are not expected to drop until Wednesday.
Torres has added that it is foreseeable that the flames will go deeper into La Orotava, so it may be foreseeable that they will be more visible to the population.
“We ask that you remain calm and ignore false news and report it through official channels,” he claimed.
The president, in fact, has asked citizens not to go near the areas near the fire to see the flames, as these will be visible from some low areas of the municipality of La Orotava.
A helicopter unloads water on the forest fire in Tenerife North, on July 23. Europa Press (Europa Press)
The president of the Cabildo de Tenerife, Pedro Martín, has indicated for his part that "the fire has reached a certain containment today", but added that because the next few hours will be crucial to attack the fire "the recreational areas and access to the mountains will remain prohibited at least until next Tuesday night.
Since the start of 2022, more than 200,000 hectares have burned in Spain, according to the European Forest Fire Information System (EFFIS, in English), which makes it the most affected country on the continent.
The President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, assured this Saturday during the meeting of the Federal Committee of the PSOE that this summer 150,000 hectares have been lost in the fires.