Tenerife Man Arrested for Throwing Stones at Fire-Fighting Helicopter

TENERIFE, Canary Islands, Spain (Reuters) – An 80-year-old man has been arrested for allegedly throwing stones at a helicopter getting used to extinguish a wildfire that has been raging on the Spanish island of Tenerife for almost every week.

The stones hit the blades of the helicopter, forcing the pilot to make an emergency touchdown at a close-by soccer pitch, the mayor’s workplace of the city of Guimar on the Canary Islands mentioned in a press release.

The suspect, 80, is the proprietor of a reservoir from which the helicopter was scooping up water to attempt to douse the fireplace, police mentioned.

“We now have one much less helicopter as a result of somebody threw a stone and rendered it inoperative, because of the influence on the tail rotor,” Rosa Davila, head of Tenerife’s native authorities, mentioned on social media.

Native farmers have protested at the usage of scarce water sources to douse the fireplace however Davila mentioned that every one the water used would get replaced.

The fireplace which began on Aug. 15 has up to now ravaged virtually 15,000 hectares of woodland inside the nationwide park surrounding the Mount Teide volcano, Spain’s highest peak. Hundreds of individuals have been evacuated from their properties.

(Reporting by Nacho Doce, Inti Landauro and Charlie Devereux, Enhancing by Angus MacSwan)

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