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After the volcanic eruption at La Palma, an unstoppable flow of lava flows through the country. Dramatic evolution: liquid rocks have already formed a peninsula on the coast.
Palms. There are wonderful, but very shocking, aerial photos that scientists have published of the lava flow on the island of La Palma.
Images from the Marine Science Institute of Andalusia show: a lava flow from the Cumbre Vieja volcano has now formed a delta off the Canary Island of La Palma.
Lava forms in the sea after a volcanic eruption on the La Palma Peninsula
Disturbing scenes show how liquid rocks fall off a cliff into the sea. There it cools slowly and forms a new land mass. In a few days, a peninsula of about 30 hectares was formed on the western coast of the island.
According to the European Copernican Earth Observation System, a black layer of lava with a thickness of one meter covers 367 hectares.
According to the latest official information, more than 3,300 hectares were affected by dark ash rain. This is roughly equivalent to the area of 4,500 football fields.
New vent at Cumbre Vieja volcano in La Palma
At the volcano in the Cumbre Vieja mountain range in La Palma, a new vent opened on Saturday. Currently, there are no indications that areas previously spared from lava flows are at risk, the Canary Islands Volcanic Institute (Involcan) said.
More videos show the lava inferno in La Palma. The volcano becomes more aggressive:
Damage from a volcanic eruption is increasing on the small Canary island of La Palma. Since the volcano at Cumbre Vieja in the south of the island became active again on September 19 for the first time in 50 years, lava has already destroyed more than 1,000 buildings, 880 of which are residential homes.
Many people in La Palma have lost their homes forever
More than 5,500 people stayed in hotels or with relatives on Sunday. Many of them will not be able to return to their homes and villages – these are buried under a meter thick layer of lava.
And major crop failures on plantations of bananas, the island’s most important produce, add to the bitter balance of the first two weeks. “Here you can see a lot of people crying all the time,” an older man told RTVE.
The end of the eruption, which had already released 80 million cubic meters of lava, and thus twice as much as it did 50 years ago, was not in sight. The head of the regional government, Angel Victor Torres, complained that “never before in the known history of the island have there been such difficulties”.
The avocado grower took the matter calmly: “La Palma is a volcanic region. The volcano was quoted by La Vanguardia that what it takes from you brings you back. (jv / dpa)