Thousands evacuated due to the eruption of the Cumbre Vieja volcano in the Canaries – Telam

The fury of nature in La Palma. Photo: AFP.

At least 5,000 people were evacuated this Sunday from their homes in La Palma, one of the Canary Islands where the Cumbre Vieja volcano erupted, it has been officially reported,

The Spanish Civil Guard announced that In the next few hours, there could be 10,000 displaced, according to the Italian news agency ANSA.

Magma and other pyroclastic materials continue to emanate from the Cumbre Vieja volcano andauthorities urged to stay away from the area of ​​the eruption, at the same time that they asked the population of the areas at risk of La Palma to protect themselves from the ashes and to lock themselves in the house if they fell nearby.

The Interior Ministry said more than 200 members of the security forces traveled to the area of ​​the eruption by helicopter.The army was also mobilized to deal with the incident, the authorities said.

As the lava continues to move slowly towards the coast of La Palma, overflowing some streets and reaching the doors of some houses, the president of the Spanish government, Pedro Sánchez, arrived on the island closely monitor the emergency, according to Spanish television (TVE).

The Cumbre Vieja volcano on the Canary Island of La Palma, Spain erupted causing a huge plume of smoke, an ejection of lava and a slight earthquake that was felt mainly in the Las Manchas area in El Paso.

“The eruption started in the Cabeza de Vaca area, in El Paso”, the island’s local government said in its Twitter account, which has started to evacuate the inhabited areas closest to the volcano, AFP reported.

The seismic effect caused by volcanic activity began a week ago and had alerted several municipalities in the Canary Islands. The National Geographic Institute (IGN) reported that lava is currently emerging through five cracks at an elevation of 400 meters.

The eruption started in the Cabeza de Vaca area of ​​El Paso Photo: Twitter Guardia Civil.

Since the start of the week, the island had a yellow light due to the volcanic risk in this area (level 2 out of 4).

Inside the volcano, there were movements of millions of cubic meters of magma and the ground rose about ten centimeters in the area of ​​Cumbre Vieja.

La Palma is one of the seven islands of the Canary Islands tourist archipelago, located near the northwest coast of Africa.

The last eruption of Cumbre Vieja took place in 1971.The Spanish Canary Islands archipelago, of volcanic origin, experienced its last eruption in 2011, this time underwater, on the island of El Hierro.

The local government has announced the evacuation of several towns. Photo: Twitter Civil Guard.