Spain: Lava engulfs numerous homes as Canary Island volcano erupts

On Sunday, about 3:00 p.m. (1400 GMT), the Cumbre Vieja erupted, pouring enormous plumes of thick black smoke into the sky and molten lava down the hillside on the island of La Palma. The island is one of the most westerly in the Atlantic archipelago off Morocco's coast.

Authorities in Spain's Canary Islands reported on Monday that a lava flow damaged approximately 100 homes a day after a volcano erupted, forcing 5,000 people to leave the region. On Sunday, about 3:00 p.m. (1400 GMT), the Cumbre Vieja erupted, pouring enormous plumes of thick black smoke into the sky and molten lava down the hillside on the island of La Palma. The island is one of the most westerly in the Atlantic archipelago off Morocco's coast. Lorena Hernandez Labrador, a councilman in Los Llanos de Ariadne, a community several kilometres from the volcano, reported that 5,000 people had been evacuated and around 100 homes had been damaged.

Images shared on Twitter showed slow-moving lava crawling down the mountainside, pockets of flame exploding as it rumbled ever closer to a cluster of homes only yards away. Elsewhere, masses of incandescent lava poured into a house's terrace. La Palma's senior official, Mariano Hernandez Zapata, described the sight as "desolate," adding that the lava was "on average approximately six metres (20 feet) high."

There was enormous grief among the thousands of individuals evacuated from their homes, with many wondering if they would have anything to go back to. Experts have been keeping a tight eye on the volcano after detecting a recent spike in seismic activity and magma displacements. On September 11, an "earthquake swarm" began, a series of seismic events that occurred over a short period of time. Since then, there have been tens of thousands of tremors, the strongest of which had a magnitude of nearly four, according to the Involcan volcanology institute. The last eruption on La Palma was in 1971 when another part of the same volcanic range — a vent is known as Tenegia — erupted on the island's southern side.