SANTA CRUZ DE TENERIFE, Oct 7 (EUROPA PRESS) –
A new tongue of lava that split yesterday from the main stream has arrived this afternoon in an area near the beach of El Charcón, on the coast of the municipality of Tazacorte. It is a branch of the main stream that ran further south that has reached the lava delta that was formed during the eruption of the San Juan volcano (1949), between Los Guirres beach and El Charcón.
The technical director of Pevolca, Miguel Ángel Morcuende, has indicated in a press conference that the breaking of this lava finger occurred yesterday at 5:00 p.m. practically at the end of the main wash, about 350 meters from its arrival at sea, devastating more banana plantations and destroying several deposits and some buildings.
Morcuende has specified that this breakdown occurred as a result of the new lava finger reaching a dividing area that has finished filling and has “spread” overhead. He added that it is most likely that the intermediate zone between the terminal moraine of the main stream and that finger will fill up again, affecting more banana plantations.
On the other hand, he indicated that the last number of people housed in the Fuencaliente Hotel is 219 people and the area affected by the lava is 431.2 hectares, 9.27 hectares more than yesterday. The maximum width of the casting remains at 1,250 meters, reflecting that the casting “is permanently moving down the chute for the past few days.”
In addition, a total of 26.47 kilometers of municipal roads have been buried by lava: 5.66 km in El Paso; 17.13 km in Los Llanos de Aridane, and 3.71 km in Tazacorte.