The containment of the fire in the municipality of El Rosario prevented the fire which was declared on August 15 in Tenerife will end in tragedyunderlines the director of Emergencies of the Cabildo de Gran Canaria, Federico Grillowho has acted as an analyst in this catastrophe.
In an interview with EFEGrillo emphasizes that the most critical moment occurred when the head of the fire, which at times behaved like “an avalanche, a tsunami”headed towards El Rosario.
The urban area of this municipality was confined for 48 hours and several areas were evacuated.
“There are populated areas that are deep in the mountains, which also have grasslands, which are very good receptors for ash and sparks. The advance of the fire if they do not stop it there, it would have gotten into The lagoon”.
“Even the ashes sometimes have the ability to jump long distances, towards the Anaga area. If the fire-fighting officers had not stopped it in El Rosario, it could have been a tragedy, ”he concludes.
This was one of the four unpredictable turns that this fire took in an attempt to “run and eat as much as it can until it reaches a point where it runs out of fuel when it reaches the coastal areas,” Grillo analyzes.
The consequence of this behavior is that, as the head of the fire advances with the wind, with a width of between 3 and 4 kilometers, it “sweeps” everything in its path and creates flanks of 30 to 40 kilometers, and when makes a 90 to 100 degree turn, one of those flanks becomes the head and “the problem multiplies”.
The situation could have been dramatic if there had been secondary outbreaks in the north
Another of the most delicate moments for the emergency services was when the fire descended from the peaks in a northerly direction, affecting Tacoronte, El Sauzal, La Matanza, La Victoria, Santa Úrsula, La Orotava and Los Realejos, and with the potential to reach to San Juan de la Rambla and La Guancha.
“We are talking about a huge scale, with a lot of population, thousands of people. Those that are in friction, in contact with the mountain, are the first, but there are more houses below, and if the ashes materialize in the form of secondary sources below, the situation could have been dramatic, ”he notes.
Federico Grillo emphasizes the “important defense” carried out by the firefighting services, which have been able to “get” the fire at the exit of the pine forest areas, where there are crops, roads and inhabited areas, and speaks of “some success ”.
“There are no deaths or homes affected. Hopefully in all the fires we would achieve at least that ”, she wields.
He believes that the fire will come under control “more or less quickly. In days things should be much calmer. Then the liquidation task can extend for weeks, even a month or two months. It is normal in large fires, ”he explains.
Grillo does not consider it to be a sixth generation fire
This expert disagrees with those who classify the fire in Tenerife as a sixth generation. It meets several requirements, but not a fundamental one: behave like a storm and suck the air hundreds of kilometers around, “like a funnel towards the sky.”
Grillo points out that the arrival of a subtropical mass gave the Tenerife fire “a certain degree of instability” to the atmosphere, and that the presence of Teide generated a convective cloud “but rain, and the fire seems to have interacted with it.”
“What happened would have to be reviewed very carefully to classify it as a sixth generation fire, but from the outset I think not. It is a big fire, with a convective behavior, but the second to third generation ones already have it, ”he notes.
But beyond this technical discussion or the affected surface, close to 15,000 hectares, Federico Grillo emphasizes that what differentiates it from the rest is its changing and unpredictable behavior and “the voracity” it had in its first phase.
“It is not the largest, but it is one of the most spectacular that we have had” to face in the Canary Islands, says Grillo.
Will there be more fires of this type and will they be more common in the future?
The director of Emergencies of the Cabildo de Gran Canaria fears that this will be the case and argues for it in the reduction of rainfall and the increase in temperatures associated with climate change.
“Vegetation is out of balance, and one way for nature to balance the system is with fire. It burns everything and we go from a very humid forest to a coniferous one, or from scrubland to grasslands… There have always been climatic changes, glaciations are. This climate change is the product of human beings and we are seeing it in the form of fires ”, he analyzes.
This expert differentiates between the “old fires, from our grandparents”, and the current ones, since those had “little load” because there was no butane or ceramic hobs and they used firewood for cooking and there was more agricultural activity.
These fires, known as “radiants”, “had a flame front and when they reached the firebreaks they stopped”.
Now the fires find themselves with more forest mass to feed on and generate columns that throw ash at some distance.
In addition, the “abandonment” of the countryside has also brought with it “the entry of homes into the mountains, or the mountains have begun to invade residential areas. We began to have fires in interface areas”, concludes Federico Grillo.
