The forest fire in Mazo is under control, after burning 1,700 hectars. And this seems like a good moment to mention that Canary Pines are amazing survivors. They can burn for hours, and then only a few days after the autumn rains begin, the new shoots sprout straight out of the bark. It’s beautiful to see.
I woke up on Tuesday morning to find that it had rained. Not much, but apparently enough to really help with the fire. It’s controlled. The fire-fighting planes are off to help La Gomera. Yippee! I went off to work at the observatory much happier for that (and took this photo of clouds in the Caldera on the way down.) I’m nobody special to be saying it, but many, many…
Curiosity is safely down on the surface of Mars, and sending NASA low resolution images. Everything worked perfectly. She can now get on with finding out if Mars was ever friendly for life. The nerds just took gold in the 560 billion metres. La curiosidad esta viva sobre la superficie de Marte, y envíando imágenes de baja resolución a la NASA. Todo funcionó a la perfección. Ahora puede seguir adelante…
I went up to Montaña las Breñas to see what was happening with the fire. A lot of other people evidently had the same idea – the car park was packed and the view wasn’t at all reassuring.
La Palma has another forest fire, just south of Mazo. La Gomera has a forest fire burning the national park at Garajoney. Animals have been burnt alive and people have been evacuated (although I don’t think anyone’s lost their home yet.)
70 people have been evacuated from La Sabina, as a precaution. As of 9 pm last night, the fire had burned 847 hectares, but the weather forecast for Sunday is cooler temperatures which should help. Much of the fire is in the area which burned in 2009, which at least means there’s considerably less fuel to feed it. A Military Emergency Unit has arrived from Tenerife with an extra 65…