Spain: Uncontrolled fires on the island of Gran Canaria

A big wildfire without control, the third important in a week, already burned between 1,500 and 1,700 hectares in the north of the Spanish island of Gran Canaria, in the Atlantic and forced to evacuate about 4,000 people.

The fire, "very virulent", has already caused "environmental disaster" and it advances towards the pine forest of Tamadaba, a native forest declared biosphere reserve, as announced Sunday the regional president of the Canary Islands, Ángel Víctor Torres, quoted by the EFE news agency.

"It's an extremely complicated situation," he said. the fire "is not contained, even less stabilized or controlled".

This new fire, which began on Saturday, is adding to the previous two on the tourist island of Gran Canaria, not yet totally extinct, although controlled.

The most important of them burned about 1,200 hectares of forest in the highest part of the island and forced to expel a thousand people from various places. The other, in the northeast of the island, burned 160 hectares of scrubland.

Between 600 and 700 soldiers, including army personnel, work Sunday at the end of the new fire, as well as ten planes between helicopters and seaplanes, while eleven roads are still closed.

Atmospheric conditions favor the spread of fire through very narrow gullies in an elevated area and hampering extinction: high temperatures, variable winds of about 50 kilometers an hour and humidity levels below 30%.