"The situation is too much ... This is very serious, very, very hard."
The mayor of Los Llanos de Aridane has seen this Tuesday how the lava flows from the Cabeza de Vaca volcano, which erupted on Sunday, penetrated the town of Todoque (1,300 inhabitants) in its slow but inexorable advance towards the sea.
"We are overwhelmed," says the councilor.
In the afternoon, the situation worsened and the ash rain intensified throughout the municipality.
In the background, always present, the continuous explosions and the roar of the volcano.
"The situation is in a catastrophic zone in the Aridane Valley," confirms the president of the Cabildo, Mariano Hernández Zapata.
"What we are experiencing is very hard, very complex, they literally disappear before our eyes."
And he affirms: "We are deeply anguished, powerless in the face of what is happening."
More information
The seven dangers of the La Palma volcano eruption
Lava approaches the sea and contact with water will increase the risk of toxic gases
Evacuations have become a common situation in a large part of the Llanos de Aridane localities, through whose territory a language of lava runs that threatens homes and businesses. The unrest also continues in El Paso, where the volcano originated. "We live in continuous nervousness," says a group of residents of the municipality gathered on the soccer field, a site that last Sunday served to gather the first evacuees and that is currently used as a food distribution center for the victims.
The mayor, Sergio Rodríguez, explains the uncertainty of its inhabitants.
“The volcano continues to cast lava, the lava continues to expand and that is why it is impossible to make a diagnosis.
Today I have no longer seen a house that was still standing yesterday ”.
Altogether, Rodríguez calculates, the number of houses devoured by the volcano amounts to almost 200, and the president of the Cabildo does not rule out that the final figure will rise to half a thousand once it reaches the sea.
Sergio Rodríguez, mayor of El Paso, on the local soccer field, on La Palma.Samuel Sánchez
Todoque's evacuation was the most striking on Tuesday.
But not the only one.
The blocked streets are multiplied by all the towns of the island, with the National, Local Police and the Civil Guard controlling all the accesses
In the late afternoon of this Tuesday, the security forces have allowed its inhabitants to return to their homes to the residents of Puerto Naos and La Laguna.
Only for the shortest time, to collect the essentials.
Until seven o'clock.
Always accompanied.
"They are orders of superiority," explains Pedro Cuesta, chief inspector of the National Police and coordinator of the Tenth Police Intervention Unit.
This is the case of Manuela and Francisco, an octogenarian couple from La Laguna who have been accompanied to their homes by a Civil Protection operation under the
chirimiri
of ashes.
"Our whole life is there," they say crying to the agents, who repeat empaths who can only take what is indispensable.
"We are still in an emergency situation," said the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, on Thursday. The technical director of the Canary Islands Volcanic Emergency Plan (Pevolca), Miguel Ángel Morcuende, confirms the situation to Europa Press. The scientific committee's estimate is that the lava advances at about 120 meters per hour, and not the 700 initially calculated. The wash runs through two languages, one of which, the one located to the southwest, in Las Manchas, has "minimal movement", barely two meters per hour, and the Pevolca scientific committee "doubts" that it will reactivate .
The other is the one that moves inexorably down the slope, and is the one that entered Todoque on Tuesday, whose church touched this afternoon.
This language is also fed by the new mouth that was opened on Monday night and that forced the eviction of the residents of Tacande, in El Paso.
Inés Galindo, a researcher at the Geological and Mining Institute of Spain, clarifies that these explosions do not have to be a symptom of a greater virulence of the volcano.
In his opinion, the Cabeza de Vaca is registering episodes of intense strombolian activity, "which is completely normal", and that for most of the time it is "stable".
Strombolian volcanisms are characterized by explosive eruptions separated by periods of calm of varying length.
European aid
The president of the Canary Islands, Ángel Víctor Torres, has tried to send a message of tranquility to the population at noon on Tuesday, taking for granted the arrival of resources from European solidarity funds in his appearance after the crisis cabinet meeting (Pevolcan ). As explained in the presence of the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, for Outermost Regions such as the Canary Islands, 1% of GDP is required in losses, which means about 400 million euros in the case of the Islands, "a figure that, unfortunately, we will exceed in spades ”, he said. All the money will not be enough to compensate, in any case, the loss of the houses of almost 200 families.
"The first affected area was El Paraíso," says Mayor Sergio Rodríguez at a table on the soccer field. "At first we thought it was going to be saved, but in the part closest to Los Llanos it was affected." Outside, in the parking lot of the soccer field, Maria Rodríguez (58 years old), a neighbor of that settlement, wanders worried. "My house is the first of all, close to the mountain, at the top," she explains nervously. “I don't know what happened to her ... I'm worried about the looting and I think: What difference does it make if she is saved? Am I going to be there alone, surrounded by lava and all these bad memories? "