A group of people residing in Granadilla de Abona, united around the citizen platform No to the Oil Platforms in the Port of Granadilla, has started a collection of signatures on the Internet through the Change.org portal, to request the Canary Islands Government to raise the emergency to level 3 for the serious forest fire which since last August 15 has burned almost 13,000 hectares in ten municipalities of Tenerife and forced the evacuation of more than 12,000 people in the north and south of the island.
The great forest fire in Tenerife damages up to eight protected areas, including the Teide National Park
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This change in level would imply that the direction of emergency management would be assumed by the State Government, which would allow more resources to be mobilized to fight this fire.
The petition on Change.org is signed by Jacinto José Velasco Triviño, on behalf of said citizen group, who argues that “despite the commendable effort of firefighting personnel, emergency managers and affected citizens, this forest disaster already has dimensions equivalent to other similar events recently occurred in the Peninsula, with the aggravating factor that the extension of the territory of our island is much smaller”. Such is the case that more than 2% of the territory of Tenerife has already been burned.
Likewise, the proponent group of this step of the emergency to level 3 states that the flames have reached more than 70 kilometers of perimeter and threaten the forest-urban interface area, causing the displacement of thousands of citizens and provoking situations “of serious danger both for the population and the firefighting teams, although fortunately we do not have to regret the loss of human lives”.
For these reasons, the signatories request “anxious the very urgent declaration of level 3” also taking into account the possibility of a worsening of the situation, which is dramatic for the population and represents an environmental catastrophe due to the affected ecosystems, including protected natural spaces, some with the categories of National Park and Special Nature Reserve.
