In pics | Wildfires in Spain's Tenerife prompt evacuations of over 26,000 people

More than 26,000 people were evacuated from their homes on the Spanish island of Tenerife, as of Saturday (August 19) as the wildfire continued to rage out of control, said the emergency services.

The local officials said that the Spanish holiday island has never witnessed a fire at this scale. 

According to media reports, fierce flames were seen overnight on Friday while helicopters were seen dropping water, the next day, on areas close to homes while smoke continued to billow in the air. 

As of Saturday afternoon, more than 26,000 people may have been evacuated, said the Canary Islands emergency services, on X (formerly Twitter) citing provisional estimates.

It also marks a sharp rise in evacuations after officials in an update on Friday said some 4,500 people had been evacuated since the fire began on Tuesday night.

As many as 11 towns have been affected by wildfire, said the local officials, as per Reuters.

The emergency services official also warned about possible “further evacuations may take place if the fire spreads.”

This comes after additional evacuations were ordered on Saturday morning due to worsening weather overnight, said regional leader Fernando Clavijo, in a press conference. 

Regional leader Fernando Clavijo also said that a rise in temperatures and stronger winds overnight on Friday worsened the situation. He also spoke about how thick smoke was hampering efforts to extinguish the fire from the air.

Pedro Martinez, one of the officials in charge of putting out the blaze said that the fire’s perimeter had “most certainly grown a lot” overnight and was “descending steadily” down the mountainside in the northern Santa Ursula area. 

Tenerife Council President Rosa Davila told reporters that the fire was at a scale that has never been seen before in the Canary Islands.

The priority was to “protect people’s lives,” said Davila, adding that none of the houses had been destroyed due to the blaze, citing the fire brigade. 

Some people evacuated from La Victoria, in the north-west of the island, are also receiving medical help.

“The night before we arrived, we had a pretty bad time. Everything was burning... the roofs were full (of ash),” resident Paulina Fernandez (not in the image) told Reuters.

As of late Friday, some 5,000 hectares have been engulfed by the wildfire with a perimeter of 50 kilometres. This amounts to nearly 2.5 per cent of Tenerife's surface area which covers 203,400 hectares. 

The blaze has also left a pillar of smoke that now stretches some eight kilometres into the air, said the officials. It is also higher than the summit of Mount Teide, the volcano that towers over the island and is Spain's highest peak.