Canaries volcano lava gushes towards sea, eruption goes on

LA PALMA - Lava poured from an erupting volcano on the Spanish island of La Palma for a fourth day on Wednesday, blanketing houses and fields, a day after people with homes on the path of the molten rock were allowed back briefly to recover belongings.

Towers of magma burst high into the air overnight, painting the night sky red and spraying fiery debris onto the flanks of the Cumbre Vieja volcano.

Drone footage earlier showed lava flowing westwards to the coast in three huge tongues, incinerating everything in their path, including a school.

During the night between Tuesday and Wednesday, the Canary Islands' volcanology institute said the amplitude of the volcano's seismic activity intensified.

That seismic activity is "an indicator of the intensity of the strombolian explosive activity," the institute said late on Tuesday. Strombolian is an adjective describing volcanic eruptions with violent explosions ejecting incandescent dust.

The report was issued as the lava pouring from the flanks of the volcano had spread to cover 154 hectares (0.59 square mile) in the towns of El Paso and Los Llanos de Aridane, according to Copernicus Emergency Management Service.

The unstoppable lava has been slowly burning and covering houses as well as fields since the Cumbre Vieja volcano has erupted on Sunday afternoon.

About 6,000 people of the 80,000 people living on the island have been evacuated since Sunday and those living on the path of the lava were allowed back into their homes for brief moments to recover belongings.

No fatalities or injuries have been reported, but drone footage captured two tongues of black lava cutting a devastating swathe through the landscape as they advanced down the volcano's western flank towards the sea.

Experts say that if and when the lava reaches the sea, it could trigger more explosions and clouds of toxic gases. Marine authorities are keeping a two nautical mile area in the sea around the area closed as a precaution.

The lava flow was initially expected to reach the shore on Monday evening, but its speed has fallen. 

-reuters

Spain searches for military helicopter crew after Atlantic crash

MADRID, Spain - Spain's defence ministry was Saturday searching for three crew members of a military helicopter that crashed in the Atlantic off the Canary Islands after initially reporting that they had been rescued by a Moroccan patrol boat.

"The people are missing, we do not know in what circumstances they disappeared. We have not been able to reach the cabin" of the helicopter, Defence Minister Pedro Morenes said late on Friday after meeting family members of the disappeared on the Spanish island of Gran Canaria.

"We can't lose hope but we are working on all possibilities," he added at a press conference at the Gando air base.

The governments of Spain and Morocco "were deploying all means" needed to help in the search, the defence ministry said in a Twitter message.

The helicopter went down Thursday, about 280 nautical miles (519 kilometres) from Gando, its destination on the Spanish island of Gran Canaria, the defence ministry said in a statement at the time.

It had set off from Mauritania after refuelling there following two weeks of military exercises in Senegal.

The defence ministry said on Twitter later Thursday that a Moroccan rescue helicopter sent to the scene spotted the aircraft floating and saw flares fired from a life raft before the patrol boat picked the crew up and took them to Dakhla, a town in Moroccan-controlled Western Sahara.

The minister said the defence ministry had originally been told by Moroccan authorities that the three crew members had been found but that the information turned out to be wrong.

"Yesterday we were officially informed that they were rescued by a fishing boat that would arrive at around 4 am at Dakhla but the boat did not appear," Francisco Ojeda, father of one of the missing crew members, told Spanish public radio.

"After we were told they might be on a kayack that was adrift," he added.

The defence ministry did not say what may have caused the helicopter to go down.

source: interaksyon.com