He was in a fright. They cut him off in a curve of that kind of firewall that is the TF-226, the road that joins El Rosario and Aguagarcía (Tacoronte), but for a moment the omens were much worse. The fire broke out in the early hours of yesterday afternoon in the surroundings of the Guillén and Montaña Facundo roads, in the municipality of La Laguna, and took shape until it went from an outbreak to a level 1 fire. The flames forced the preventive eviction of 25 people from villages in the upper area of La Esperanza and, according to figures from the Cabildo de Tenerife when announcing the stabilization, burned some 20 hectares.
The TF-226 road becomes a firebreak and prevents the flames from entering the mountain
The first notice came at approximately 3:30 p.m. Something was happening at a border point between La Laguna and El Rosario. Firefighters, Brifor and different police forces moved to the place. The conato was going to more. Seen from afar, from the La Esperanza highway (TF-24), it appeared as a large column of smoke with a very marked point of origin. To establish a simile, the image could recall those bonfires that decades ago were made inside a drum on farms in the midlands and in which the smoke rose very vertically. It was no coincidence that something similar happened in this case: after its start and its first advances, the fire went into a ravine where it found enough fuel.
And in that ravine it became strong and there it also boxed in and ended up dying thanks to the extinction work. “The key is not to go beyond that,” the mayor of El Rosario, Escolástico Gil, was heard saying in the middle of the afternoon. And it was a strategic point. Next to it is the TF-226, better known as Calle El Sol –and which in that specific enclave is renamed Vista Castillo–, while on the other side there are some orchards, a couple of houses and in a few hundred meters appears and to the mountain of La Esperanza. That was the fear. It has been more than 25 years since the fire that affected this area in 1995, one of the biggest in the contemporary history of Tenerife, but its memory is still so alive in the place that this Wednesday stirred up some old ghosts.
People in the area looked into the distance or waited next to a road cut on the TF-226. More in detail, this road starts in an ascending direction from Calvario street, the main street in the town of La Esperanza (it joins the gas station with the Town Hall). In ten minutes walking from the center was the place of the events, at the point where the Los Carriles road also begins, which forms a kind of wedge with Vista Castillo street, yesterday converted into a key place in the development of the fire.
“We are trying to keep the road from passing,” agreed the Councilor for Citizen Security of the City Council of La Laguna, Alejandro Marrero, when the situation was still uncertain. The socialist mayor and the lagoon mayor, Luis Yeray Gutiérrez, were also on the ground. Marrero worked in the town hall and Gutiérrez was having lunch when they had to abruptly change their schedule for what was supposed to be a quiet Wednesday afternoon in August.
The evicted residents of the upper area of La Esperanza returned to their homes last night
Given the entity’s view of what was happening, preventive evictions were carried out. The 25 people who were affected were residents of El Poleo, Las Erillas, Madroño-Goteras and Juan Fernández Street, all Rosario nuclei that are almost in the mountains. The exhibition hall of the City Council and, in case the fire was going to get worse, the Lomo Pelado pavilion were the two places that the Consistory enabled for the neighbors, although the majority ended up in the surroundings and in the houses of relatives or friends. waiting for that to be a scare, as it finally happened.
The presence of aerial means helped to stop the flames. The insular director of Security, Rubén Fernández, explained that four helicopters and an Air Tractor aircraft based in La Gomera were deployed. Between these resources and the terrestrial ones they waged a fight against the fire in which as soon as the fire seemed to be contained, it was rekindled. Zarzal, heather and some scrubland fed the flames. “If we contain the fire here, we will have made substantial progress,” insisted the mayor of El Rosario, this time in statements to the media.
“It is not a dish of good taste to be in a situation like this,” said Luis Yeray Gutiérrez. “They are managing to anchor it to the road,” said Rubén Fernández, and highlighted that the weather was also playing in its favour. Around 8:30 p.m., the Cabildo de Tenerife officially announced that the fire had been stabilized and that the people who had been evicted could now return to their homes.
