The Celia storm is moving away from the Canary Islands and today its only trace will be adverse coastal phenomena on all the islands, but with a yellow warning (the lightest), which will involve waves of between four and five meters, according to the State Meteorological Agency (Aemet). ). The most relevant of yesterday’s day were the landscapes with ice and snow on the summits of La Palma, Tenerife and Gran Canaria, which involved the closure of access roads to the aforementioned enclaves, at least during the morning and midday.
Faced with half a thousand incidents recorded by the 1-1-2 operating room during the day on Monday due to strong gusts of wind, especially in Santa Cruz de Tenerife, Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, La Laguna, Adeje or the Valle de Güímar, yesterday, Tuesday, said emergency coordination center registered barely sixty in the entire Archipelago between seven in the morning and half past four in the afternoon, of which 27 occurred in the province of Santa Cruz de Tenerife and the remaining 33 in Las Palmas. That level of activity dropped even more during the afternoon, as explained from 1-1-2. Most of the incidents were related to wiring problems, falling branches and a tree. There were no injuries in any of them.
Tenerife Firefighters carried out few actions yesterday related to the Celia storm. In Santa Cruz de Tenerife, the professionals of said entity assigned to the Tomé Cano park attended the fall of a palm tree at the confluence of Reyes Católicos avenues with Belgica, in Santa Cruz de Tenerife. In the capital of Tenerife, firefighters also acted due to problems in a facade on Ángel Guimerá avenue. In fact, the General Directorate of Security and Emergencies of the Canarian Government yesterday lowered the situation of the Archipelago to pre-alert, after the alert decreed on Monday. And the Cabildo de Tenerife deactivated the Insular Emergency Plan (PEIN) after the end of the current alert for wind and the pre-alert for snow. Firefighters from the Tenerife Consortium carried out 78 interventions during the PEIN activation period, especially in Adeje, Arona, Valle de Güímar, Santa Cruz and La Laguna due to falling branches, trees, power and telephone poles or solar panels.
In just 36 hours, Endesa received a hundred telephone calls managed through the breakdown telephone service center (CAT) and the registry on the website itself, to request the urgent intervention of the company’s operators due to electrical incidents caused by the strong gusts of wind associated with the Celia storm. Most of the calls came from citizens, mayors and councilors of the different municipalities of the Canary Islands to alert about the detachment of cables on public roads and electrical poles that fell dangerously to the ground and in certain cases affected road traffic.
In addition, the occasional fall of several metal towers is recorded, the most cumbersome being located in Moya and Candelaria. The elevated electrical structures were literally bent by the force of the wind until they fell to the ground. The wind at times reached gusts of up to 150 kilometers per hour and in the Izaña area they reached 169 on Monday afternoon, according to reports. In other cases, there was damage to insulators, contacts between electricity conductors, as well as blown fuses, due to objects that raise the flight moved by the wind such as plastic, canvas or awnings, among others. Normally, these materials touch the lines and cause incidence.
The most affected areas were Las Palmas de Gran Canaria and Santa Cruz de Tenerife, as well as Arafo, Tuineje, El Rosario, Haría and the south of Gran Canaria, in addition to various actions in Fuerteventura and La Palma. In fact, yesterday morning there were still cable detachments and other incidents that required the intervention of Endesa’s team of operators, through its subsidiary e-Distribución.
The director of the Distribution area in the Canary Islands, Carlos Lafoz, insisted on the intense work to which said department had been subjected in recent hours, as a result of the multiple falls of electrical elements on public roads. Some endangered the integrity of people.
“Fortunately, there have been no personal injuries, but it is true that the storm has caused many electrical damages, such as the fall of cables and several support points that were completely bent,” said the manager.
“It must be clarified that in some cases we have acted immediately, but in others we will attend to the repairs as the weather conditions improve, since we also have to guarantee the safety of our operators,” Carlos Lafoz pointed out.
The staff of the State Meteorological Agency (Aemet) in Izaña reported that the damage assessment caused by the storm began yesterday afternoon. One of the most serious was that the wind broke a piece of the roof of three square meters. The access road to the observatory was produced at 2:00 p.m., thanks to the operators of the Cabildo Roads area.
In Izaña the minimum temperature reached five degrees Celsius below zero, although during the morning it rose to -1.1 and 0.8 degrees below zero. The storm came to block the main door of the facilities and the state of the roads during the morning caused the only two workers who were in the aforementioned area to be isolated until the early hours of the afternoon. Yesterday there were gusts of wind of up to 75 kilometers per hour, that is, half or less than half of the maximum detected last Monday.
The accesses to the Teide National Park remained cut during the morning. The island highway from La Esperanza (TF-24) was closed due to the existence of ice sheets between kilometers 16 and 43. It was also closed at the Arafo crossing (Los Loros) due to the existence of water, sleet and snow at kilometer ten, according to the Insular Road Center of the Tenerife Council.
In the afternoon, the island road between Chío and Boca de Tauce (TF-38) was opened. And the same thing happened with the road that connects Vilaflor with Las Cañadas (TF-21), specifically until the entrance to the Cable Car. Another of the island roads that was left open to traffic yesterday was the one that connects Icod de los Vinos with Buenavista (TF-42), at the height of the coastline of the historic center of Villa de Garachico.
The island director of Roads of Tenerife, Tomás Félix García, pointed out that the TF-21 and TF-24 roads will remain closed until today due to the risk that ice sheets may be generated during the early hours of the morning. The island corporation’s conservation teams will start working on them starting at 7:00 a.m. and, if the situation does not worsen, these roads will open throughout this Wednesday.
