The heat and drought have led the Government of the Canary Islands to advance the Canarian Plan for Civil Protection and Emergency Response for forest fires (Infoca), which will now be operational until the end of the summer.
Although last January, the Executive already activated a pre-alert for a few days in the western islands and Gran Canaria due to the risk of fire, something that had never happened before, now the device is being put into continuous operation until the end of the summer period.
Winter has not yet ended, but the fire plan is prematurely activated to deploy preventive measures more typical of the summer months.
The Government now emphasizes that the risk of forest fire probability is “unusually very high”.
Not in vain, the Canary Islands are currently suffering the longest drought since 1961. This situation, warns the Executive, “could now generate fires with a great capacity to spread, which require a rapid response, coordinated with all the administrations involved. and sufficiently sized.”
This scenario will lead the archipelago to “anticipate the positioning of the State's aerial means of extinction on the islands.”
The Executive has stressed that the situation of the mountains is especially worrying due to the dryness accumulated in the subsoil in the south of Gran Canaria, the southwest of Tenerife and even in the Anaga massif (northeast of Tenerife), "which had never recorded the current lack of humidity.”
The situation on the western slope of La Palma and in practically all of La Gomera and El Hierro is also worrying.
The president of the Canary Islands, Fernando Clavijo (center);
the vice president, Manuel Domínguez (third from the left), and the Minister of Territorial Policy, Manuel Miranda (third from the right), in their meeting this Monday with the Committee of Experts on Emergencies derived from forest fires at the Government headquarters in The Gran Canarian palms.
The Government of the Canary Islands explained this Monday that it has decided to make this decision after listening to the recommendations of the technical working group made up of experts in civil protection, extinction and meteorology, who met this morning with the president of the Canary Islands, Fernando Clavijo.
For the moment, the special pre-alert declaration will remain activated permanently, and the committee of experts will hold periodic meetings to analyze the evolution of the situation, and advise the director of the Emergency Plan, the Policy Advisor, in decision-making. Territorial, Territorial Cohesion and Waters, Manuel Miranda.
The Government of the Canary Islands has announced, in turn, that it has implemented a series of measures to fight fires.
These range from the design of strategies for better coordination of resources, the homogenization of extinguishing teams by capabilities, the development of a common radio communications protocol and self-protection measures in interface areas.
Drier winter
The State Meteorological Agency (Aemet) certified last week in its winter report that this has been the driest winter in history in the Canary Islands.
Between December 1 and February 29, the average temperature was set at 17.9 degrees, which represents an anomaly of 3.1 degrees (the peninsular territory registered an anomaly of 2.4 degrees).
According to the agency's delegate on the islands, David Suárez, only for four days in December were temperatures below normal.
The haze was another of the protagonists: the air was clean in just 12 days in December, January and February.
12 days in total - Gran Canaria, Fuerteventura and Lanzarote, in fact, are currently on pre-alert for this phenomenon.
And above all, there is the absence of precipitation.
Only 36.3 liters per square meter fell on average throughout the winter, 28% of what was expected.
In the first month of 2024, it only rained 4.7 liters per square meter on average in the entire archipelago (13% of what was expected).
This was the first time at this time of year it has not snowed on Teide in more than 100 years.
On the 1st, the plenary session of the Tenerife Cabildo approved an institutional motion that declared a water emergency on the island due to the confirmation of “an extreme and long-lasting drought in the midlands.”
Last summer, the island suffered the worst of the fires declared in 2023 in Spain, which ended up affecting more than 15,000 hectares, 7.2% of the total area, and a fifth of the forest mass.
The situation has no signs of improving: Aemet ruled last week that it expects the coming quarters to continue to be warmer and drier than normal.
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