Communiqué from the IAC about the recent fire in Garafía

Advertised on

08/25/2020

Authors

The Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) and the international institutions of the Roque de los Muchachos Observatory would like to give due recognition to the outstanding work carried out by the personnel who have participated in the tasks of extinguishing the fire declared last Friday, 21st August, in the municipality of Garafía (La Palma) and which on the Sunday was “stabilized”, thanks to their professionalism, effort and courage in extremely difficult labour.

We would also like to praise the efficiency and the coordination shown by the various administrations involved, especially the municipalities of the Island, the Cabildo of La Palma, the Government of the Canaries, and the Government of Spain. The technical work and the organization has set a very positive precedent, which managed to stabilize in only 48 hours a fire which was particularly complicated, because of the zone where it started and because of the prevailing meteorological conditions. The capacity and the quantity of the means used, both on the ground and from the air, and their rapid deployment were decisive in the favourable development of the tasks of control and extinction.

Above all, we wish to express our solidarity and our total support for the inhabitants of Garafía who have been considerably affected by the fire, and who in some cases have suffered material an emotional losses. The painful sacrifice by those who had to abandon their valued possessions has without doubt avoided an even worse outcome. Our best wishes towards overcoming these very difficult circumstances.

Thr activity of those involved in the extinction, extremely well coordinated by the competent authorities, avoided the extension and the rise of the flames towards the summit, thereby saving other municipalities and also the Roque de los Muchachos Observatory and its scientific installations.

Thanks to the effort of all of them, the Observatory, using the relevant authorizations, has begun to resume the activities of its scientific operation, which were interrupted by the evacuation carried out last Saturday at 13.00 hrs. Activity was resumed in a prudent way, paying full attention to events and, of course, at the disposition of the authorities for whatever can be done to obtain complete extinction and, afterwards, the full recovery on the envirnoment.

Our most sincere gratitude to those whose responsibility is to protect the island of La Palma under extreme circumstances such as those just experienced. We feel deeply proud of the experts on whose shoulders fall this difficult and very important task.

It may interest you

Press release

Several Neptune-like planets discovered in a theoretically barren region

The distribution of planets in the over five thousand distant solar systems discovered to date forms a complex puzzle. There is a region in the planetary orbit graph, known as the " Neptunian desert", where very few Neptune-like planets with orbits of between two and four days period around their star have been recorded to date. Now, a scientific team led by the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) and the Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía-Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (IAA-CSIC) , using a novel technique, new planets around red dwarf stars located precisely in

Advertised on

10/31/2024 - 10:00
Read more
Press release

IAC scientists detect a ‘sub-Earth’ orbiting Barnard’s star, the nearest isolated star to the Sun

The single star nearest to the Sun is called Barnard’s star. A team of researchers led by the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC), has recently detected a ‘sub-Earth’ orbiting it. This exoplanet, called Barnard b has at least half the mass of Venus and orbits rapidly around its star, so that its year lasts only a little over three Earth days. This new exoplanet is sixteen times nearer to Barnard’d star than Mercury is to the Sun, and has a surface temperature close to 125oC, so it does not have liquid water on its surface. This discovery, led by the IAC in collaboration with a number

Advertised on

10/01/2024 - 13:00
Read more
Press release

A huge stream of stars is discovered in the Coma cluster

An international team of scientists, with participation by researchers at the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC), has discovered a very large, but thin, stream of stars in the Coma cluster of galaxies. This is the largest stream of stars detected until now, and the first to be found in a cluster of galaxies. This finding, which is published in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics, was made using observations taken with the William Herschel Telescope (WHT) at the Roque de los Muchachos Observatory (Garafía, La Palma, Canary Islands). The Coma Cluster is a large cluster of galaxies

Advertised on

11/30/2023 - 10:00
Read more