JOSE MARÍA ROBLES
@josmrobles
Madrid
Updated on Friday, 24September2021-11: 09
Share on Facebook
Share on Twitter
Send by email
Comment
Inge and Rainer, the owners of the 'casa milagro' on La Palma.
"Although we cannot go, we are relieved that he is still standing"
El Paraíso, the 'ground zero' of the volcano.
"We have lost everything, everything ..."
When Cumbre Vieja burst,
Antonio Carrillo
was with his daughter at home watching cartoons on YouTube. That night, it was he himself who uploaded content to the platform. «
I had just been given a drone for my 40th birthday
. The volcano exploded and I decided to record it, ”says Carrillo, who lives three kilometers from
ground zero
in El Paraíso. “I shared the videos with friends for them to see, but more people saw them and started calling me. They asked me: please, focus on my grandmother's house, take out my parents' house ... I thought it was
my way of lending a hand in misfortune
».
Since then, Carrillo, in charge of several banana plantations on La Palma, has become the Samaritan of the drone, the only inhabitant of the island capable of offering the residents evacuated by the eruption
some clue about the state of their homes and other properties
while access to the most affected municipalities is cut off.
His YouTube channel has reached
100,000 views
since last Sunday. The nearly twenty housed aerial recordings represent the last hope for many. «I have been called from France, from Germany ... There are people who do not know if their house is still standing or not. People here build alongside parents, brothers, cousins, so there are entire families that have been left with nothing, "says the documentary maker who never considered being one.
And what do you see from the heights? «
Where before there were fields and houses, now there is a black stain that engulfs everything
and that advances and advances. When you focus on what remains to be destroyed, your heart breaks ... », confesses who only learned to handle his DJI Mini 2, valued at 500 euros and who came into his hands because of his love of running in the mountains.
Carrillo takes a little time out of his agricultural chores every day to record two or three videos. It attends to the
requests
that are coming in and
outlines a route to confirm the worst omens or provide relief
to the evicted population. Something that sometimes, and given the changing state of the situation, only achieves in the first instance. "I wrote to someone who had a house in good condition and said: 'Your house seems to be saved.'
The next day I flew again and there was no home
. I was under 30 meters of lava.
Carrillo's images are harsh and have no sound. In them, the
catastrophe
is perceived
on a stick
, with no other adornments than the minimum adjustments of the camera angle. "The media only focus on either the mouth of the volcano or a tragedy, but they do not make an overhead shot of the advance of the lava," he says without wanting to correct the shot to anyone. In fact, he has not made any problem for television networks like La Sexta to use his images.
The
vocation of public service
Carrillo has earned him countless samples of thanks, but its work was interrupted early in the morning on Thursday. The Police proceeded to
confiscate the drone
. «I have been told that I could not fly it because there were restrictions due to the visit of the Kings. I had not found out. They just called me from an outpost in the El Paso area to pick it up with the
corresponding sanction,
"he pointed out late in the afternoon.
Not even the possibility of a complaint would make him stop recording, he admits.
«
By helping I have gotten into a problem.
I don't care, I'm going to keep doing it
».
On his channel, a follower offered to finance him via Bizum or PayPal.
Or, directly, to buy another drone.
"I don't want anything," he rejected the proposal.
"If someone wants to make an income, let them do it in an account created for people who have lost everything."
According to the criteria of The Trust Project
Know more
La Palma volcano
The Palm
Canary Islands
science
Solidarity
VolcanologyCumbre Vieja, the huge volcano that has put La Palma on high alert
La PalmaThe anguish of Father Alberto to save his church from the volcano: "We only have to pray"
SciencePablo G. Silva: "The megatsunami theory created a catastrophic scenario and served to sell more insurance in the US"
See links of interest
La Palma volcano live
Last News
Work calendar
Home THE WORLD TODAY
Master data new narratives
Surne Bilbao Basket - Casademont Zaragoza
Granada CF - Real Sociedad
Osasuna - Real Betis
Lenovo Tenerife - Unicaja
Cádiz - Barcelona, live