“The eruption is over,” announced the spokesman for the Canary Islands government, Julio Perez, head of the operation and director of Pevolca, who specified that the scientific commission gives Monday, December 13, as the last day of the eruption, the date on which the tremor signal stopped and all parameters of the La Palma volcano declined.
The volcano, whose eruption magnitude was set at 3, lasted 85 days and 8 hours, from September 19, 2021 at 2:11 UTC to December 13, 2021 at 10:21 UTC, as specified by Pevolca Scientific Committee Spokesperson, maria jose blanco.
Julio Pérez spoke of relief, satisfaction and hope, although he warned that the emergency continues and, therefore, the activation of Pevolca.
From Monday, the relocation plan will begin to be studied, which will be “safe, orderly, gradual and gradual” and Pérez calculated that the first relocation of some of the 7,000 evacuated people could begin in the first half of January.
The emergency is not over and there is still a lot of work to restore essential services and continue monitoring the volcano’s gases
“As long as the risk or danger persists, Pevolca will remain active,” said Pérez, who does not estimate it will be deactivated in the short term.
Something that has corroborated Miguel Angel Morcuende, spokesman for Pevolca’s steering committee, who insisted that “the emergency is not over” and that there is still “hard work” to restore essential services and continue monitoring the volcano’s gases.
Julio Pérez announced that the next steps are to “rebuild, rebuild, improve and replace”, as “this terrible daily flow of destruction has stopped” in what is probably the biggest civil protection emergency catastrophe in Spain in recent years.
The director of the operation praised the effectiveness of Pevolca, which should serve as an example and model for unified action by all administrations and collective management to address the public issue, starting with reconstruction.
Figures left behind by the eruption
Julio Pérez revised some of the numbers that this emergency device left, such as the more than one hundred Pevolca meetings since its activation on September 13, six days before the eruption on Sunday, September 19, in what constitutes the longest volcanic episode on La Palma in a historical period.
finally, the volcanic wash occupy 1,219 hectares and two lava deltas were generated, one 43.46 hectares south of the eruption and one 5.05 hectares north.
the eruption destroyed 1,576 buildings according to the cadastre count and 2,988 according to estimates from the European Copernicus satellite system.
swept 370 hectares of cultivation, most of them banana trees, but also vineyards and avocados and a total of 73.8 kilometers of roads were affected.
Julio Pérez also highlighted the great contribution of science in this emergency, with 528 accredited scientists
Julio Pérez also highlighted the great contribution of science in this emergency, with 528 scientists accredited, as well as the good work of the thousand people of the emergency apparatus.
During the eruption, there was ten evacuations, with 7,000 people affected and six confinements and 500 operations were canceled at the airport due to the presence of ash.
The director of Pevolca highlighted as a novelty the presence of drones in monitoring volcanic activity: a total of 2,800 flights that are particularly useful for monitoring eruptive activity.
Julio Pérez was also fertile in the emergency works that were attended to during this period, such as the construction of roads, a pier, replacement of transmission lines and startup of desalination plants.
He also offered words of thanks for the “integrity, efficiency and solidarity” shown by the oil palm producer throughout this crisis and praised the performance of the director of Pevolca’s technical committee, Miguel Ángel Morcuende.
Source: EFE
Rights: Creative Commons.
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