“The night was very hard, but thanks to the work of the firefighting teams, the result has been very positive,” said the president of the Tenerife council, Rosa Dávila, at a press conference on Sunday morning.
The Canarian emergency services indicated in a tweet on the social network X, formerly known as Twitter, that the firefighters had been able to work “with more favorable weather conditions than expected.”
More than 12,000 people had been evacuated from their homes since the fire started on Tuesday. As of Saturday, more than 8,000 hectares (20,000 acres) of pine forests had burned, but Dávila said the figure would likely be higher on Sunday.
At the moment no injuries had been reported and Dávila said that thanks to the firefighters, no houses had been burned so far.
The blaze, described as the worst in Tenerife for several decades, threatened 11 urban areas along the blazing rugged mountain range. Access was extremely difficult for firefighters.
Air quality in 19 urban areas was not good, according to emergency services, which urged people to stay indoors and wear masks if they went outside.
The flames in the northeast area of the island were not close to the main tourist areas of the island.
More than 400 firefighters and soldiers were working against the fire, along with 23 helicopters and water-dropping planes.
The Canary Islands have been in drought for most of the last few days, like much of the Spanish mainland. The archipelago has registered below average rainfall in recent years due to changes in weather patterns affected by global warming.
The Spanish mainland was preparing for another heat wave starting on Sunday. The Spanish meteorological agency issued an alert on Saturday for rising temperatures in the coming days, which would reach 40 degrees Celsius (104 Fahrenheit) in some spots.
The seven Canary Islands are located near the northwestern African coast and southwest of the Iberian Peninsula. At their closest they are 100 kilometers (600 miles) from Morocco.
More than 2,000 people were evacuated last month from a fire on the nearby island of La Palma that affected some 4,500 hectares (11,000 acres).
Spain leads the list of European Union countries affected by forest fires so far this year, behind Italy and Greece, with 75,000 hectares (185,000 acres) burned, according to the European Forest Fire Information System.
40% of the almost 800,000 hectares (2 million acres) that burned last year in the European Union were in Spain, according to the community agency.
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Ciarán Giles reported from Madrid.
FOUNTAIN: Associated Press
