Spanish PM to visit fire-ravaged Canaries

The Spanish prime minister is making an emergency visit to the Canary Islands today to assess raging wildfires that have forced the evacuation of 14,000 people.

Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, who was about to begin his summer holiday, has scrapped plans to visit Barcelona and will instead rush to the islands of Tenerife and Gran Canaria, where towering flames have burned 25,000 hectares (62,000 acres) of pine forest and other land.

No one has been injured.

The fires, fuelled by scorching temperatures and strong winds, are burning inland areas rather than the coastal resorts popular with Europeans seeking sun and sand.

Spanish Environment Minister Cristina Narbona described the situation as one of “maximum alarm” and said the central government will send aircraft and crews to aid the regional administration in extinguishing the blaze.

Tenerife is the island worst hit. Flames there have forced the evacuation of 8,800 people and blackened 15,000 hectares (37,000 acres) of land. Nine hundred homes have been destroyed.

On Gran Canaria, 10,000 hectares (25,000 acres) of land have been charred and 5,200 people evacuated.

The president of the regional government, Paulino Rivero, said the islands’ rugged, mountainous terrain makes it hard for firefighters to work, leaving water-dumping aircraft as their only effective weapon.

Spanish television station CNN+ broadcast satellite photos showing huge plumes of white smoke rising from the islands, which lie off the coast of West Africa, and footage of citizens using tree branches to beat in vain at flames approaching rural roads.

Smaller fires are also burning on the islands of La Gomera and La Palma. Locals say this is the first time all four of these islands – out of seven that make up the archipelago – have been on fire at the same time.

On Gran Canaria, the fires have burned 65% of the Palmitos bird sanctuary park. It was feared that some toucans and other exotic birds may have died, the national news agency Efe reported.

Army troops, along with eight firefighting aircraft, were trying to smother the blaze.

On Saturday, police said they arrested a 37-year-old forest ranger who admitted starting the Gran Canaria fire, saying his job contract was about to expire and he wanted to keep working.