houses destroyed, thousands evacuated and a river at over 1000 ° C

The eruption, the first recorded on this island for 50 years, has forced nearly 5,000 residents to leave their homes, since it started on Sunday afternoon.

The regional government of the Canary Islands has, however, clarified that it does not plan any new releases for the moment, since the lava flows are now heading “towards the sea”, as Twitter indicates. But the damage from the rash is already visible.

“The destroyed houses (…) are very numerous”, declared to AFP a spokeswoman for the regional government of the Canaries, specifying that “there is not yet a fixed figure”.

The impressive rivers of lava have destroyed trees, invaded roads and managed to enter some houses, as shown by several videos posted on social media.

These flaming streams, at over 1000 ° C, advance at an average speed of 700 meters per hour, according to the Canary Islands Volcanological Institute.

In statements on public television, the mayor of El Paso, one of the four populations evacuated preventively by the authorities, indicated that “at least twenty houses have been totally destroyed” in his locality.

“In its passage, the lava left absolutely nothing”, described Sergio Rodríguez, stressing that the neighbors “have a lot of uncertainty”. “They will surely not return for a long time,” he said of a possible return to their homes.

In just three minutes, Angie Chaux, a neighbor of Los Llanos de Ariadne, who lives a few kilometers from the volcano, had to leave her home at 4:30 a.m. with her husband and three-year-old son.

“We weren’t home when the alert came,” said the 27-year-old, “but when we saw him, we wanted to go back and the road was closed. The police told us about it. let it go and said ‘3 minutes’, ”she explained.

He entered and was only able to take the emergency backpack that the authorities had asked him to prepare.

“I am nervous because we do not know what will happen, if we are going to find the house,” she said, adding that the lava passed 700 meters from her house.

The Spanish media have counted a hundred homes affected by the material expelled by Cumbre Vieja.

Located in the center of the island of La Palma – one of the seven that make up the tourist archipelago of the Canary Islands, near the northwest coast of Africa – the Cumbre Vieja volcano was under intense surveillance after recording a significant increase in its seismic activity in the last days.

Finally, the eruption began shortly after 3:00 p.m. local time (2:00 p.m. GMT) on Sunday.

According to Canarian President Ángel Víctor Torres, Cumbre Vieja has between 17 and 20 million cubic meters of lava. Therefore, the eruption will continue, he warned in a video posted on Twitter.

“According to the technical committee, everything seems to indicate that there will be no new eruption points,” added Torres, who recalled that the “safety” of the inhabitants was “guaranteed”.

The President of the Spanish Government, Pedro Sánchez, postponed the trip to New York he had planned for this Sunday to attend the UN General Assembly and went to La Palma, where he follows the evolution of operations since night.

The activity of Cumbre Vieja could however last “several weeks or a few months”, due to the presence of a second reserve of magma located at 20 or 30 kilometers deep, according to the scientific coordinator of the Volcanic Institute of the Canaries , Nemesio. Perez.

The last eruption on the island of La Palma, which has around 85,000 inhabitants, dates back 50 years, in 1971.

Of volcanic origin, the Spanish archipelago of the Canary Islands experienced its last eruption in 2011, this time underwater, on the island of El Hierro, causing the evacuation of hundreds of people.