La Palma volcano: new evacuations are ordered due to the advance of lava | PHOTOS

The lava that flows without interruption for more than three weeks of the Cumbre Vieja volcano, on the Canary Island of La Palma, has forced about eight hundred people to evacuate from their homes, given the path that one of the magma flows is taking.

Since the beginning of the eruption and until today the number of people evicted from their homes was close to 6,000.

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This Tuesday, the authorities decided this new eviction before the slow but inexorable advance by the municipality of Los Llanos de Aridane of one of the new flows, which emerged last Saturday.

The technical director of the body in charge of the supervision of volcanic activity, the Volcanic Emergency Plan of the Canary Islands (Pevolca), Miguel Ángel Morcuende, reported that he has asked the technicians to draw up a hazard map regarding the direction it could take. lava.

Morcuende specified that the number of evacuated people may vary because many residents had previously left the area, days ago, removing belongings from their homes in anticipation that something could happen.

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The scientific spokesperson of that organization, María José Blanco, indicated that in the last hours the volcanic tremor signal has increased, which in principle indicates that there is a higher gas content in the magma that is emerging from the eruptive center.

CONCERN ABOUT ASH AT AIRPORTS

The height of the column of ash and gases that the volcano spews today reaches 3,500 meters and, although the breezes are favorable to air quality, tomorrow they will carry the ashes to the west and east of La Palma, and mainly to the south, and not It is ruled out that fine ash falls in the south of the neighboring island of Tenerife.

Lava flows from the Cumbre Vieja volcano, seen from Los Llanos de Aridane on the Canary Island of La Palma on the night of October 9, 2021. (JORGE GUERRERO / AFP).

This situation is likely to affect operations at the La Palma airport – which was already inoperative at some points last week – and could do so at the southern Tenerife airport, although no changes are expected in this regard until Thursday.

The volcano has emitted 21,868 tons of sulfur dioxide and 1,848 of carbon dioxide per day, and yesterday there was a peak of great intensity, exceeding 350 micrograms per cubic meter of particles, specifically 830, in a specific episode that remitted.

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Miguel Ángel Morcuende recalled that seismicity continues to be high, but is still concentrated at medium depth – from 10 to 15 kilometers – and above – more than 20 kilometers -, which indicates that there is no probability in principle that a new emitting center will emerge.

He also added that one of the problems of this emergency is that the morphology of the volcanic cone “is changing every day, its appearance and structure continually mutates because it is an unstable building.”

Volcanic eruption in the Canary Islands. (AFP).

THREE LAVA WASHES

He explained that, as a consequence of the rupture of the cone of the volcano last Saturday, right now there is a primitive stream, which has “totally lost its bellows and has no lava input”, and that runs through the north of the Todoque mountain with three branches : one that reached the sea days ago creating a lava delta, another in the El Charcón area and a third that has been located about 200 meters from the coast in the El Cantil area.

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A second stream, which descends “with enormous power” and carries most of the lava flow, runs parallel to the previous one.

This, which is constantly being watched and monitored, is causing significant damage when crossing areas of crops and residential buildings with buildings that “are being carried forward” but that, however, does not worry as soon as it runs through areas that have already been evacuated.

And then there is a third stream, of less power than the previous one, which is the one that runs further northwest and has crossed an industrial estate diagonally, Morcuende said, who indicated that it is “transposing to a head of a new basin and threatens urban elements ”.

“This is the one that worries us because it moves to areas that were not evacuated” and for this reason the order to evacuate has been given, although the lava will take time to reach these areas because it moves at between 10 and 15 meters per hour, he stressed.

People with reduced mobility who have been evacuated have been transferred to the El Fuerte barracks, and the rest will be accommodated in the hotel in the town of Fuencaliente, where until today there were 237 evacuees.

On the other hand, today the confinement of some 3,000 residents decreed yesterday ended after this third casting came into contact with a cement factory and given the possibility that this would produce the emission of harmful gases, which has finally been ruled out .

So far the eruption has destroyed 169.44 agricultural hectares, of which 90.25 correspond to banana trees, 9.43 to avocados, 48.37 to vineyards and 21.39 to other crops.

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