In the five weeks since then, the lava has slowly but inexorably buried one building after the other – on Sunday it was already 2270, as the state TV broadcaster RTVE reported.
Around 900 hectares, which corresponds to more than 1200 football fields, are covered with a black lava crust several meters thick: residential areas, banana plantations, roads, irrigation basins, greenhouses, gardens as well as forest and scrubland.
For those affected, around 7000 of whom had to leave their homes, it is a slow-motion disaster. How high the total damage is currently remains unclear. Weeks ago the island government spoke of 400 million euros, but this estimate is now out of date.
Many light to medium earthquakes also pulled people’s nerves. On Sunday alone the earth shook almost 80 times. Volcanologists cannot say how long the eruption will last. It could take weeks or months. The last eruption in 1971 ended after 24 days, the previous one in 1949 after 42 days.