The lava flow from a volcano that erupted on Sunday on the island of La Palma, in the Spanish Canary Islands, was advancing slowly on Wednesday afternoon, so much so that it was no longer certain that it reaches the Atlantic Ocean.
Read also IN IMAGES - Eruption in the Canaries: lava slowly descends towards the sea, feared toxic gases
Columns of black smoke several hundred meters high continued to rise from this volcano, Cumbre Vieja.
Authorities said the suspended ash reduced visibility, and asked residents of the island to limit their travel by car.
6,100 people evacuated including 400 tourists
According to the latest report provided by the European system of geospatial measurements Copernicus, 154 hectares of land and 320 buildings were destroyed by lava, including many homes hastily abandoned by their occupants.
Read also Eruption in the Canaries: lava walls destroy a hundred houses, 6,000 people evacuated
A total of 6,100 people have been evacuated since the start of the eruption, which has so far not been dead or injured.
Among them are 400 tourists who have been transferred to Tenerife, another island in the archipelago, the authorities said.
The damage caused by the eruption - the first since 1971 on this island populated by nearly 85,000 inhabitants - would already exceed 400 million euros.
Faced with this situation, the firefighters had made during the night of Tuesday to Wednesday a desperate attempt to deflect the lava flow of a good ten meters high entering the village of Todoque, one of those evacuated by the authorities and the last locality before the coast, located some 2 km as the crow flies.
But the president of the Canary Islands region, Ángel Víctor Torres, criticized the initiative.
"
Faced with the advancing lava (...) we can do nothing
," he said during a press conference.
"
Neither a barricade nor a ditch
" can stop a lava flow, he added.
"No certainty" on the advance of the lava
In fact, maybe the lava will stop on its own.
Its slowdown, already very marked, was in any case further accentuated on Wednesday.
Initially, the arrival of lava in the Atlantic, feared by the authorities because of the toxic gas fumes and the projections that this could cause, was scheduled for Monday evening, then for Wednesday or Thursday.
But the time was now for doubt on this subject.
Read alsoCanaries: the Cumbre Vieja volcano, on the island of La Palma, has erupted
"
We currently have no certainty as to whether the advance (of the lava) will go to the sea or not,
" said Wednesday Miguel Ángel Morcuende, the director of the emergency cell which follows the eruption, during a press conference.
The lava flow was advancing at only four meters per hour on Wednesday afternoon and only traveled 15 meters overnight from Tuesday to Wednesday, the regional government said in a statement. The latter, who advised the inhabitants of the island to cover their noses and mouths when they go out, decreed an "
exclusion radius of two nautical miles
" around the place where the lava could come in contact. with the ocean.
According to the Volcanological Institute of the Canaries (Involcan), the eruption of Cumbre Vieja could last “
between 24 and 84 days
”, with the key to significant emissions of gas and smoke.
According to the Institute, between 6,000 and 11,500 tonnes of sulfur dioxide are spat out daily into the atmosphere.
The king expected on the spot
The cloud, which has already reached the Moroccan coasts and the Iberian peninsula, should then rise towards the Balearic Islands and the south of France, according to the projections of the Copernicus program.
According to the same source, this cloud of sulfur dioxide should even cover the entire western Mediterranean and much of the Maghreb on Friday.
King Felipe VI was expected there Thursday to meet with evacuees and Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, currently in New York for the UN General Assembly, confirmed during a press conference that he would return to the island on Friday.
