SANTA CRUZ DE TENERIFE, July 21 (EUROPA PRESS) –
The fire that originated this Thursday morning in the Los Campeches area, in Los Realejos, has already reached San Juan de la Rambla and it is expected that it will touch the municipality of La Guancha during the night.
At a press conference, Montserrat Román, head of the Canary Islands Government’s Civil Protection and Emergency Response Service, acknowledged that the fire is advancing “quickly” to the west, causing complications on the right flank due to the fact that there are many ravines and abandoned farms that they allow the flames to “feed” easily.
He has detailed that during the night there will be a hundred troops on the ground whose main mission, in the face of a possible change in the wind, will be that the fire is channeled and does not go down to low levels but rise again inside the mountain.
He has also said that the drones with thermographic cameras will be deployed at night to help better define the perimeter –five kilometers with more than 100 hectares affected– and when dawn breaks, the ten aerial means of the device will intervene again, nine helicopters and the Air Tractor with liquid retardant.
In principle, no more evacuations are expected to be carried out apart from the 31 people evicted in San Juan de la Rambla, nor are there houses in the path of the fire, but as a precaution, the Red Cross has organized a camp with 50 places in the municipal pavilion.
He has admitted that the temperature will drop a little tonight but not the humidity and good weather conditions are not expected until Friday night.
The president of the Government of the Canary Islands, Ángel Víctor Torres, has specified that the fire “is not controlled” because the temperature is high and the humidity is low, with the advantage on this occasion that the wind does not blow with great intensity.
He has said that the night “is key” to contain the advance of the fire until the aerial means are reactivated and he hopes to take advantage of the good weather conditions on Friday and Saturday to control the fire before temperatures rise again on Sunday.
He has made an “appeal for prudence and calm” and highlighted the “coordination” between administrations and the “immediate mobilization” of the media while waiting for the seaplane, which for now will not arrive because there are more than one ten serious forest fires.
The president of the Cabildo, Pedro Martín, has highlighted the usefulness of the use of drones –for the first time in the anti-fire campaign– and that “efficiency” has prevailed over “protocols and bureaucracy” given that the media Regional offices were already available to the Cabildo before requesting Level 2.
