Evacuations increase to 12,000 as forest fires rage in Tenerife | CNN

CNN
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More than 12,000 people have been forced to flee their homes in tenerife after forest fires swept through the Spanish Canary Islands.

Police data showed the number of evacuations increased from the 4,500 reported on Friday. Some 11 towns have been affected by the fires, but the tourist areas have been spared.

While worsening weather conditions that would “complicate firefighting operations” were initially expected overnight on Sunday, the night had been “calm, with more favorable than expected weather conditions,” the local government said.

Improved conditions had seen a return of a “certain normalcy” in firefighting operations, Tenerife firefighters said on X, formerly known as Twitter.

The fire currently covers an area of ​​approximately 8,400 hectares (about 20,757 acres), according to local authorities.

Tenerife firefighters described the emergency operations as their “largest deployment in history”. They are being assisted by the peninsular emergency services and the Spanish army.

“It is probably the most complicated fire that we have had in the Canary Islands in the last 40 years,” the region’s leader, Fernando Clavijo, told reporters at a press conference on Thursday.

Tenerife was particularly hot last weekend and in the first part of this week with temperatures hovering around 30 degrees Celsius, above average for this time of year.

Wildfires have broken out in numerous parts of the world this year, including North Africa, Hawaii, Canada and Europe.

Extreme heat is also growing again in Europe.

In France, the national weather agency warned that next week would be the hottest period of summer this year, with 49 regions receiving an orange level heat wave warning.

On Sunday, Météo France said it was rare for a heat wave of “such intensity” to occur so late in the summer.

Temperatures in Europe began to rise on the Iberian Peninsula this weekend, spreading to central Europe for much of the next week, according to the CNN weather team.