The ashes have become the protagonist of the day on Saturday, 27 days after the La Palma volcano came to life. The new mouth opened on Friday night in the southeast of the Cumbre Vieja volcano cone has not led to a greater flow of lava, it has calmed in the last hours the expulsion of gases and pyroclasts (all the materials that come out of the cone) and it has not interfered in the removal of belongings by the evacuated population.
The mouth, on the other hand, has caused the amount of ash in the air to increase, which has made it difficult to see in much of the island and has filled it with a strong smell of sulfur. With the passing of the hours, the winds have concentrated it in the east, where the capital, Santa Cruz de La Palma and the airport are located.
This circumstance, foreseen by the Pevolca (Volcanic Emergency Plan of the Canary Islands), together with the thermal inversion ―phenomenon that prevents the air from circulating due to the creation of a plug due to the high temperatures― and another episode of haze ―winds from the this one that carries dust from the Sahara – have forced the different companies to cancel all their flights with La Palma today, according to Aena sources. For this Saturday alone there were 34 scheduled departures and arrivals at the airfield. These poor conditions are expected to persist for at least the next 24 to 36 hours.
The inhabitants of the La Laguna neighborhood of the Los Llanos de Aridane neighborhood, which was evicted this week, have been able to breathe relatively calmly. At least for the next few hours. The provisional director of the Pevolca Technical Committee, Rubén Fernández, explained this Saturday that the small appendix that broke off between Thursday and Friday from the wash that runs further north “maintains its path to the west”, south of the center urban.
Explaining the trajectory of the castings, in any case, becomes more difficult as the days go by and the supply of material from the cone continues. There is a first wash, which the Pevolca qualifies as primal ―The first to emerge from the volcano― and that devastated neighborhoods such as El Paraíso or Todoque during the first week. Until Thursday it had stopped, but the greatest contribution in recent hours has reactivated it, as confirmed by thermal cameras. This is the language that has ended up in the sea and has formed a lava delta that now measures about 34 hectares.
Over this original stream now runs another that also moves in parallel, that is, in a west-northwest direction and that could also end up in the sea after surrounding La Laguna Mountain to the south.
This tongue pierced this week the polygon of Callejón de la Gata in Los Llanos and, in addition, a new, smaller language has detached from it, which the experts have called a “lava finger” and which, as explained by Rubén Fernández, has taken La Lagoon. “Continue your advance. He has passed the La Laguna soccer field and continues his advance at a slow pace ”, of about 400 meters per hour.
Meanwhile, the area affected so far by lava amounts to 742 hectares, with a maximum width of 2,350 meters. According to Copernicus data, there are 1,923 buildings affected, of which 1,826 have been destroyed. According to the Cadastre, 854 of these properties have residential use.
Earthquakes will follow
Both the scientific committee and the management of Pevolca have confirmed that the earthquakes felt by the population on the island of La Palma will continue, although these will remain at a depth of about 37 kilometers, according to the director of the IGN, María José Blanco. This data reduces both its dangerousness and the possibility that new mouths may be created far from the emitting center. “There are no data that allow us to think that this depth is going to change,” explained Blanco.
The last hours have given a good account of this greater seismicity. During the early hours of Saturday morning, the IGN’s 24-hour monitoring volcanic surveillance network located a total of 37 earthquakes associated with the eruption of the Cumbre Vieja volcano, two of them with magnitudes greater than 4.