Blazes displace thousands on Spain’s Canary Islands

Wildfires drove thousands of people from their homes near a rare nature reserve in Spain’s Canary Islands yesterday after a separate mainland blaze killed two, authorities said.

Firefighters struggled to control the flames that engulfed the wooded hillsides on the island of La Gomera, reducing lush green trees to black dust, spewing grey smoke and displacing residents and tourists.

That fire started more than a week ago and has devastated more than 4,100 hectares of land, including hundreds of hectares in the Garajonay National Park, a Unesco-listed reserve home to rare subtropical plants. Water-bombing aircraft were dousing the flames that crackled rapidly through ravines in the west of La Gomera.

“It is very difficult because of the high temperatures, the wind, the low humidity and the lack of aircraft,” a spokesman for the island council, Karen Bencomo, said.

“We have three water-bombing planes and four helicopters. We need 10 more planes.”

On the other side of the island in the main town San Sebastian, beds were prepared in school lodgings for hundreds of evacuees, mostly tourists and visitors who came by boat from the west, mayor Angel Luis Castilla said. More than 5,000 people remained displaced from various villages on Monday afternoon, the regional government estimated, half of them from around Vallehermoso in the north of the island.

That area was evacuated on Monday “to guarantee the safety of residents” as the fire advanced through nearby ravines, the regional government said in a statement late yesterday.

“Everyone is clearing out. They are moving us, saying it is a precaution, but who knows? We can see the smoke getting closer,” said Maria Gonzalez, 43, a visitor from Tenerife, who fled Vallehermoso with her mother and daughter.