La Palma, Sept. 26 (BNA): Volcanic eruptions spewed red-hot lava into the air on La Palma on Saturday as a new outlet opened for emissions, forcing the tiny Spanish island to close its airport and causing long queues for boats off the island. .
Cumbre Vieja volcano, whose eruption began last Sunday, has entered a new eruption phase. The Canary Islands Volcanoes Institute, Involcan, said the new eruption vent that opened was to the west of the main vent.
The National Institute of Geography and Mining said its drones showed the cone of the volcano had shattered.
“It is not unusual in this type of eruption for a volcano’s cone to break. A crater is formed that does not support its own weight and … the cone is fracturing,” said Miguel Angel Morquinde, director of the Pevolca Volcanic Response Committee. At a press conference on Saturday. “This partial rupture happened overnight,” according to Reuters.
Morquinde said the current evacuations would continue for another 24 hours as a precaution.
The volcano has spewed thousands of tons of lava, destroyed hundreds of homes and forced nearly 6,000 people to evacuate nearly 6,000 since it began erupting last Sunday. La Palma, with a population of over 83,000, is one of the archipelagos made up of the Canary Islands in the Atlantic Ocean.
The Spanish airport operator, Aena, said the island’s airport had been closed.
“La Palma Airport is not working due to the accumulation of ash. Cleaning tasks have started but the situation may change at any time,” she wrote on Twitter.
Workers removed volcanic ash from the runway and electronic boards showed canceled flights and the departure hall was quiet as some people arriving at the airport discovered they would not be able to travel.
There were long queues at the main port of La Palma as people, some of whom had their flights canceled, tried to keep ferries off the island.
“I’m going to Barcelona. But because we can’t fly, we take the ferry to Los Cristianos (on the island of Tenerife) and from there we will go to the airport and fly to Barcelona,” said Carlos Garcia, 47.
Local authorities said that evacuees from three other towns on Friday will not be able to return to their homes to retrieve their belongings due to the “development of the volcanic emergency”.
The emergency services said that “volcanic monitoring measurements taken since the beginning of the eruption recorded the highest energy activity so far during Friday afternoon.”
In the quiet port of Tazacorte, fishermen described the devastating impact of the eruption on their livelihoods.
“We haven’t been out fishing for a week, the area is closed,” said Jose Nicholas San Luis Perez, 49, who lost his home in the blast.
“About half of the people I know have lost their homes,” he told Reuters. “I meet my friends on the street and we start crying.”
On Friday, authorities evacuated the towns of Tacane de Abajo and the part of Tacane de Arriba that had not already been evacuated after the new vent opened in the side of the volcano.
No deaths or serious injuries were reported in the eruption, but about 15% of the island’s economically vital banana crop could be at risk, putting thousands of jobs at risk.
HF