The Tenerife fire, which broke out last Thursday in the north of the island and affects five municipalities: La Orotava, Los Realejos, San Juan de la Rambla, La Guancha and Icod de los Vinos, is now stabilized by fire crews after the work carried out during the night, and has not spread to other areas or grown in size, but it is still not considered to be under control nor is it extinguished.
This has been reported this morning by the Minister of Security for the Canary Islands Government, Julio Pérez, who appeared at a press conference with the president of the Tenerife Cabildo, Pedro Martín, and the director of extinction, Pedro Martínez, after the technical coordination meeting with extinguishing teams deployed to fight the fire.
Tenerife will be on orange alert today due to high temperatures, a factor that could harm the extinction of the fire, and the area affected remains around 2,800 hectares, with a perimeter of 27 kilometres.
Yesterday was a positive day, in the sense that this setback of the fire is consolidating and is expected to continue in the next few days. However, today “is going to be a particularly difficult day”, because the weather is going to be worse than yesterday, with higher temperatures throughout the island, and also in the area of the fire.
There is going to be a drop in relative humidity, although relatively weak winds are expected, between 10 and 20 km/h, with slightly higher occasional gusts. "Today the work will focus on consolidating and cooling the hot spots and it will be tomorrow afternoon and, above all, Wednesday, when the weather changes and temperatures drop," according to the experts.
Given its evolution in the last few hours, the authorities have agreed that most of the 585 residents who were evacuated as a precautionary measure in various neighbourhoods of Los Realejos and La Orotava can return to their homes.
However, there are still around 30 homes in Los Realejos that will continue to stay empty, those that are closer to the slopes of Tigaiga and Chanajiga which includes the areas of Camino del Madroño and Los Carozos, bearing in mind that there are some hot spots that could be reignite.
Today this situation will be studied again, by staying within the security perimeter of 1,500 metres. The access roads to the nuclei where the return is not allowed, is being guarded by the security forces.
