Thousands evacuated as wildfires hit Spanish tourist island

People were forced to leave their homes in the night as the fire ravaged through the forest

Authorities on the Spanish tourist island of Tenerife evacuated some 3,000 people from their homes overnight as a wildfire sparked by high temperatures and strong winds raged in a forested area already ravaged by fire in August.

Emergency services said on Thursday on X, formerly known as Twitter, they had requested assistance from the army’s Military Emergency Unit, citing the blaze, which ignited on Wednesday, as a high level emergency.

Soldiers and firefighters battled to control the fire which broke in the northeast of the island in the town of Santa Ursula, away from the main tourist areas in the southwest.

600 residents from the neighbouring town of La Orotava were also ordered to evacuate as a precaution.

The same area suffered one of the island’s worst wildfire in decades which burned for days, destroying some 15,000 hectares (37,000 acres) of woodland within the national park surrounding the Mount Teide volcano, Spain’s highest peak. Thousands were also evacuated then, with most returning to their homes.

The Canary Islands regional leader, Fernando Clavijo, told a business event in Madrid on Thursday the August fire had been brought under control but never completely extinguished, with embers still burning in the forest.

He said firefighting efforts overnight had “gone well”.

“There is less fuel (for the fire), so it shouldn’t get out of hand,” Clavijo said, referring to the already scorched terrain.

The island, in the Atlantic off Africa’s northwestern coast, is on alert for high temperatures that are expected to reach 39 degrees Celsius (102.2 degrees Fahrenheit) throughout Thursday.

The inferno comes as a heat alert is in place as temperatures are unseasonably high for the time of year, islanders face temperatures above 30C which they usually only endure in the height of Summer.

Elsewhere, countries around the world are bearing the brunt of climate change with abnormally high temperatures for the time of year and the UK recorded the hottest September to date.