Thursday, July 31, 2008
Anniversary of Tenerife's Forest Fire
In the recorded history of our islands, we have never seen a natural catastrophe of these proportions said Jose Miguel Perez.
One year ago, on July 30th, 2007, a forest fire was declared, in the Los Campeches area of Icod el Alto in Los Realejos, Tenerife. The alarm was raised at 10 a.m., according to most news reports at the time. By early afternoon, the fire had advanced towards La Guancha and, during the following night, raced westwards across the island, out of control. Ten districts; Los Realejos, San Juan de La Rambla, La Guancha, Icod de Los Vinos, Garachico, El Tanque, Los Silos, Buenavista del Norte, Santiago del Teide and Guía de Isora, 18,800 hectares of land and around 11,000 people were affected.
Maybe there's some press embargo I'm unaware of, but given the magnitude of this ecological disaster, I'm surprised I haven't spotted any reports to mark this date in any of the digital editions of the Canary Islands' media. Are they afraid mentioning it will affect tourism? Surely, avoiding the truth of anything, always backfires in the end. So, if nobody else is going to do it ...
This is not a date I shall forget in a hurry, having been amongst the people who were evacuated last year and I think it wants remembering, because there are still way too many unanswered questions and, despite suspicions, nobody has been arrested or held responsible for the fire in Tenerife.
More than one eyewitness reported that they saw large plumes of smoke as early as 8 a.m. This alone begs the question as to what Tenerife's very own Neros were fiddling at while the island burned for a couple of hours.
Then, after being told that "helicopters can't work at night" (period) ...
On the morning of July 31st last year, we woke to a frightening view like the one to the left (only closer), because, seemingly, not much at all, if anything, had been done to stop the spread of the fire during the night. Maybe the wind prevented using helicopters. Maybe the terrain doesn't help and I'm damn sure all the hanging electrical cables add to the hazards, but helicopters can and do work at night. Think police or border helicopters using infra-red cameras at night to search for suspects, immigrants, etc.
The next night, inexplicably, helicopters could and did operate in Tenerife.
There certainly weren't enough people fighting the fire on the ground either and whatever happened to the firebreaks that the engineer responsible for managing fires in Tenerife's mountains had claimed that they have and that divide the forest into 500 hectare portions (yet 18,800 hectares became affected) is probably a larger mystery than the meaning of life itself.
While travelling across the north of the island from the extreme west to Puerto de la Cruz (roughly a 90 minute journey) we saw smoke like this coming from the mountains, practically all the way along the route ...
Photo: Fire aftermath by darijus We saw whole mountain sides stripped bare by the fire. It cleans, it probably brings benefits too, but it's still sad, it's still ecological disaster and it should not happen. What a difference 4 crucial days made (from green to brown).
Knowing that only a chance change in wind direction is the only reason I escaped the fate of some of the people in Masca who lost their homes ...
Early promises that there would be help for everyone affected were great big untruths. Even those who suffered direct loss and damage; houses burnt and possessions lost only got partial help and slowly at that. Those of us out a few hundred euros, having had to evacuate humans and pets, still suffered post traumatic stress (mostly from knowing you were surrounded by abandoned land, covered with easy to burn material and that nobody gave a flying f... fig about it), got nothing.
As a matter of interest, I'd read that those who lost homes and possessions were paid an initial amount of around 2,500 euros. That was supposed to replace everything except the bricks and mortar? My mother's family were bombed out during World War II and, I remember her telling me, with some indignation, that the family had only got around £200 in compensation from the British government at the time to set up anew. That doesn't seem much at all, even for wartime. However, I did a bit of research on the relative values and purchasing power of money between 1940 and the nearest to the present day, which was 2006. What I found was that to equal that "measly" £200, victims in 2007 would need to have been be paid around £7,500 (11,250 euros), i.e. around 4.5 times more than they received.
It will take 4 years for vegetation to recuperate fully, but this photo of a future fir tree, by José Mesa, is just one of a set of images taken in May 2008, 9 months after the fire. Those, in turn, are part of his collection of images (see map), taken at various intervals and, which show that despite it all, nature is coming though. We must take our hope from that.
NB: Extreme heat (~40C) and high winds had "helped" last years fire along and hindered efforts to fight the fires. Once again, the islands are on pre-alert, which, Shelia in La Palma explains, "means don't panic yet, but check before you go out". Winds of Force 8 on the Beaufort Scale are expected.
Labels: Tenerife Fire
I was on a two-day walking trek through the pine forests on the North of the Island during July and I saw the devastation first hand, though it was nice to see that the pine forests were recovering, with foliage now growing back on most of the trees. The laurisilva wasn't faring as well I'm afraid, I saw areas where it looked like they were replanting, but there were still acres of burnt out stumps. Very Sad.