Inside Las Nieves Church Today is the fiesta of the patron saint of La Palma, the Virgin of Las Nieves. It’s also a public holiday for the whole island. Las Nieves is about 2 km inland from Santa Cruz de la Palma. When I went this morning, it was impossible to park within a mile of the fiesta. Sorry, I just turned around and went home. I expect it’s much…
NASA image of the La Palma fire on Sunday I was going to have a break from blogging for a couple of days, but I couldn’t resist this photo, taken from a NASA satellite on Sunday August 2nd. The island downwind of La Palma is La Gomera, 50 km away. I think it must have been early on Sunday afternoon: the fire in the west is out, and the clouds…
Car workshop, Los Canarios, Fuencaliente The fire’s under control at long last. The La Palma blog‘s been going crazy with traffic, as people tried to find out what was happening here. So I started to feel a bit like a lighthouse-keeper — you know, responsible — and on Monday I went out for another look at the fire. The road was open and I got to Fuencaliente. It’s in better…
The island government has just announced that the fire’s under control. “Under control” isn’t quite the same as “out”. It means the mountainside is still smouldering, and they have to put out the embers before the wind gets up. But with this weather, it really ought to be ok. And apologies of you tried to access this site yesterday evening. The domain providers in the USA had a power cut…
Burnt House in Fuencaliente, La Palma My first impression of Los Canarios, the main village in Fuencaliente, is that it’s a heck of a lot better than I expected. The fire damage is very fluky, presumably because the fire moved so fast and the gusts of wind kept changing direction. As you can see, sometimes a house got burnt out completely, and its neighbours untouched, or the top floor burned,…
Helicopter dropping water on the fire at Tigalate, on La Palma The fire on La Palma is still burning, but it’s a lot smaller, and a lot farther up the mountain and away from houses. Hopefully, now that all the helicopters and both planes are dumping water on the same place, it’ll be sorted out soon. Smouldering forest, Mazo, La Palma Meanwhile there are acres and acres of smouldering forest,…