“It’s a horror film”, they say in the Canaries under the eruption of the volcano

“It’s a horror movie”says Willy Rodríguez, an inhabitant of the Canary Island of La Palma, Spain, who saw, as in slow motion, the advance of lava from the volcano Cumbre Vieja, erupting since Sunday, above the house of his parents.

“It’s like part of our soul has been ripped off. It is very difficult to assimilate and have optimism in the future ”, says Willy of the volcanic eruption which It has already destroyed more than a hundred hectares and devoured nearly 200 homes of an island that lives mainly on agriculture and, to a lesser extent, tourism.

“For the locals, it was a real shame. When the fires go out, don’t forget those hundreds of affected families, ”he asks. one of more than 6,000 evacuees they had to leave their homes.

Many neighbors are already suffering from states of shock, anxiety, fear and stress, say the psychologists who assist them.

The dual

Grief is not just the death of a loved one. It’s a loss. Of our goods, of work, of a relationship. Here we are in a situation of mourning, ”says Cristina García, provincial coordinator of the Psychological Response Group for Emergencies and Disasters.

“In emergency psychology, we work with the communication of bad news and in this case not even that since the neighbors see with their own eyes what is happening with their houses and their fields”, adds the psychologist about the volcano eruption that he already has nine mouths for which the flow of smoke, rivers of lava, gas and solid remnants of incandescent rock is incessant.

For Jesús Ibáñez, professor of the Department of Theoretical and Cosmos Physics of the Faculty of Sciences of the University of Granada, people should have been evacuated sooner.

“It is not the same to do an emergency evacuation of 5,000 people in a few hours, where the person does not have time to take out their things, that the population had been prepared between 24 and 48 hours before “, he says Bugle Ibáñez, seismographer and vulcanologist, with extensive experience of Argentinian Patagonia.

Keep one thing in mind: these evacuations are not of short duration. In other words, for these people who have lost their homes, the evacuation is faulty but there will be people who, even with their houses intact, will not be able to return in the weeks or months to come, ”he explains. .

Evidence

“The scientific community had clear evidence through terrain deformation and seismicity that the eruption was imminent,” Ibáñez said. I know that within the Emergency Committee, both the colleagues of the Institute of Volcanology of the Canary Islands and those of the National Geographical Institute spoke of the need to the traffic light was orange, that is, ‘we are going to evacuate’, and that was not the political decision. “

The expert lists: “People with reduced mobility were evacuated the same morning (Sunday morning, a few hours before the eruption which started at 3:15 p.m., 9:15 a.m. Argentinian time)”, he explains. There were people who did their asado, hikers who hiked. There was a lot of luck, but also relaxation on the part of some classes. The scientist advises but does not execute ”.

Isn’t it necessary to mourn the victims by chance?

“There is always a chance,” says the volcanologist. If the eruption had been some 400 meters lower, it would have affected a population that had not been evacuated. “

PB