Reacción a "Reactions: the wildfire in Tenerife forces thousands of people to evacuate although they manage to stabilize it in some points"

The Tenerife fire entered the sixth generation fire category on Saturday afternoon. The conditions of strong wind and low humidity are making the extinction work extremely difficult, exceeding the current extinction capacity. These extreme fires are capable of generating their own dynamics and turbulence that favor erratic and unpredictable behavior, which increases their danger.

At the level of suppression there is little more that can be done, apart from the enormous task that the suppression systems are already carrying out. It is easy for this fire to exceed 10,000 hectares, thus entering the category of mega-fire, although due to its behavior it is already an extreme fire. Prevention against these extreme events is essential. Unlike other natural disasters, these fires are somewhat predictable. There are territorial planning tools that can help create 'fire-smart' landscapes, more resistant and resilient to large fires. Said territorial management should incorporate not only different measures of sustainable forest management, but also policies that help fix the rural population whose agro-pastoral activities can help reduce the fuel load (that is, accumulation of flammable vegetation) in the territory, reducing the risk of fire. These fire prevention services must be valued by society, with the owners of the agroforestry land being beneficiaries of aid or payments for said services.

The forest-urban interface must be protected against this type of event, for which protection strips must be prepared. Society must also be aware that fire is a fundamental element of Mediterranean ecosystems and a landscape management tool that should not be demonized, but integrated as one more planning tool and comprehensive fight against future mega-fires. Controlled or prescribed burning should be seen as a vaccine. A vaccine that helps prevent the greater virulence of these new generation fires, the result of increasingly pressing climate change, in concomitance with the rural abandonment of many areas of our country.

The management and comprehensive fight against extreme fires must be comprehensive, transversal to many socioeconomic sectors of our society and based on sustainable environmental solutions. These solutions exist and must be analyzed and valued from a social, economic and environmental point of view.