Live Eruption
After a period of what experts regarded as relative stability, if a piece of living geology can be called stable, the Cumbre Vieja has passed some of the most brutal days of its short and unforgiving life.
The volcano ends its third week of eruption in the southwest of
La Palma with
landslides, new lava flows and destruction.
Already on Thursday it entered a particularly strong explosive phase, and both members of
the National Geographic Institute
and other observers thought that the crater had enlarged, probably when some mouths joined.
That crater seemed precisely
a kind of fryer in which waves of lava jumped and fell back into it
, but not before splashing the slopes red.
To this must be added
a new tongue of lava that reached the sea on Thursday
when it separated from the main stream.
This destructive spectacle on Friday went haywire.
Shortly before midnight the noise was more deafening than usual at the height of the Tajuya church, one of the usual viewpoints in the Valley area, where all the curious who want to see the volcano come and also the point where they gather. IGN researchers.
There you could see
pyroclastic bombs of very considerable sizes
collected by scientists in the exclusion zone
during the day
, some the size of a human head, collected about 800 meters from the outlet of the lava.
Of course, they were not as large as those blocks that were later detached into the casting of the size of several cubic meters in size.
At one o'clock in the morning of this Saturday it began to be seen how a great flow of lava ran down the north slope of the cone.
This is a novelty compared to other lava flows that the volcano had released so far, which had headed west, first slowly and then quickly.
The latter began to slide with a speed that was perfectly noticeable with the naked eye in the river of magma that colors the palm tree night.
As the scientists explained,
the composition of the ejected material has changed
, and that makes its characteristics when it comes up to the surface are also different.
At three in the morning it began to spread down the north slope of the cone and covered a large part of it in less than a minute.
The mass of lava leaped over and over again, while a little behind it, through a higher mouth, a pressurized cloud of smoke, gases, pyroclasts and ash rose towards the sky in an immense column.
After that, in a little less than two hours, the new wash began to turn slightly to the west, seeking the steepest slope, and invaded the
La Laguna
industrial estate
.
From there the lava began to spread destruction throughout the area and did not stop.
Fortunately, there were no victims to mourn, because the entire area was within the exclusion zone
and it was anticipated that there could be lava flows that would reach there.
That did not prevent, however, that plantations, industrial buildings and some houses were razed.
The director of the Pevolca emergency plan,
Miguel Ángel Morcuende
, added this Saturday at noon that the total area that the volcano has destroyed is already 492 hectares, which means that 20 of them have been precisely invaded in recent hours since the Cumbre Vieja was unleashed.
The
Volcanological Institute of the Canary Islands
(Involcan) described the new lava flow as generating "tremendous destruction in its wake."
Precisely, this aggressiveness was making it difficult for scientific teams to move around the area with some comfort.
The Civil Guard patrols under the command of Lieutenant
Esteban Ramos
, a 24-year-old young man, who were driving along the roads in search of possible risks to the population
, could not move very well either
.
The unstoppable advance of the lava on the polygon allowed to see flares every so often, presumably buildings or infrastructures that were burning.
For example,
several pylons and street lamps were seen to melt in moments
.
Fig trees, banana trees and other crops disappeared in seconds under an immense and from afar they created the illusion of being matches that were lit in the dark.
Perhaps the most impressive thing about the volcano's destructive power was seeing how in a matter of five minutes a large white building, which some residents of the area described as a furniture warehouse, disappeared under the magma.
The latter occurred around 5:30 a.m. on Saturday (6:30 a.m. on the Peninsula), and just 15 minutes later a good part of the north of the cone collapsed, causing another great diffusion of lava down the slope.
Agents of the security forces and bodies displaced in the area explained that there was evidence of at least two ships completely destroyed, although at first glance, due to the number of fires that were seen, they could be more.
These same sources insisted that no new evacuations are planned in the valley's populations.
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