Photos: Javier Fuentes.- The island of Lanzarote has been one of the least affected by the storm of water and wind that has ravaged the Canary Islands tonight. However, the aftermath has been felt significantly throughout the island's geography.
For now, the Island has dawned, on a magnificent day of radiant sun, covered in dirt; traffic signs and traffic lights have been literally torn from the ground; garbage containers have appeared overturned and several meters away from their usual place; information and advertising panels from several warehouses in the Playa Honda industrial area have flown away; several canopies have come off in the city of Arrecife, which has caused the closure of different streets of its main artery; several vehicles in the town of San Bartolomé have been crushed by the fall of a wall; one of the works located at the entrance of the island's capital has been completely flooded with water; numerous trees are lying on the ground; César Manrique's wind toys have been seriously damaged...
It is a discouraging panorama that does not reach the levels of destruction of islands such as Tenerife or Gran Canaria, where the night has been a real chaos.
The tremendous wind of the early morning has also caused a significant mess in the electricity supply company, Unelco, which has seen how several of its towers, most of them absolutely obsolete and in deplorable conditions, bent as if they were made of chewing gum. In addition, in Montaña Mina some radio and television antennas have fallen, which in turn have caused the fall of some of their neighbors. At the moment you can only listen to Radio Nacional de España.
All emergency services are working to try to restore the situation, waiting to assess in the first hours of the morning the real extent of the damage caused.
End of the storm
The director of the National Institute of Meteorology in Las Palmas, Fortunato Benito, explained to the ACN Press agency that the tropical storm Delta "already passed", as the front is currently over Morocco, which has caused the winds to be from the north and of much lower intensity than in recent hours.
Given this situation, the INM has lifted the alert for strong winds and the state of the sea, which has improved, while maintaining the alert for rain during the morning.
"There has been a lot of wind, destruction and little rain," said Benito, explaining that only 27 liters have been collected in La Palma, 14 liters in La Gomera, 19 liters in Izaña (Tenerife) and smaller amounts in Gran Canaria, although at the moment there is rain in some municipalities in the center of the island, in some cases intense.
The director of the territorial center of the INM explained that the passage of Delta has been something "very new for us," given that a storm of this type "I had never seen it in the Canary Islands." "We had always looked north to see the storms that were coming to us, but now we have to start looking west and south," said Benito, who did not hesitate to affirm that "it is evident that climate change in the world is affecting us."
"Twenty-five cyclones in a year is not normal", said Benito, who assured that it cannot be ruled out that more may arrive this year given the rate of cyclone creation that the monitoring center in Miami is detecting.
