The arrival of the Military Emergency Unit (UME) in the municipalities of San Bartolomé de Tirajana and Mogán has been met with profound relief by residents of the midlands and southern coast of Gran Canaria. After six days of relentless battering by Storm Therese, the sight of the military convoys and mud-pumping equipment has brought the first respite to hundreds of families who watched as water and mud overflowed their garages, basements, and homes. The gratitude is palpable in villages like Cercados de Espino and Ayaguares, where the saturated ravines and road isolation had created a feeling of extreme vulnerability over the past 48 hours.
The deployment of the Army is not merely a matter of technical logistics, but a vital support for a population helplessly witnessing the collapse of their roads, as occurred on the GC-654 near Risco Blanco. Residents of the higher areas of Tirajana have seen mobile phone communications fail and power threatened to go out, leaving the Military Emergency Unit (UME) as the only operational link capable of clearing roads buried by landslides. The intervention of fire trucks at the most critical flood points in the Arguineguín ravine has prevented further damage to private infrastructure that was already at its limit.
For residents in the south, the military support comes at the darkest moment of the storm, just as the Regional Ministry of Health has been forced to suspend non-urgent medical transfers, increasing the anxiety of patients with scheduled appointments. Knowing that the Military Emergency Unit (UME) guarantees support for evacuations and mass pumping operations has eased the tension at local coordination centers. This sense of gratitude also extends to the security provided by the presence of these troops on routes that have been preventively closed, such as the Ayacata road or the access to Tirma, where military patrols prevent fatal accidents on stretches of extremely unstable asphalt.
The coordination, now under the sole command of the Canary Islands Government, following the escalation of the emergency to level 2, ensures that state resources are concentrated where the water has struck hardest. While municipal brigades were overwhelmed by the more than 110 incidents recorded in a single morning, the arrival of the Military Emergency Unit (UME) has restored confidence to southern Gran Canaria, which today feels less alone in the face of Storm Therese's fury. Wednesday promises to be another day of resistance, but with the certainty that the Army's operational arm is deployed in the heart of the ravine to prevent the catastrophe from worsening.
