In recent weeks, since the eruption from the La Cumbre Vieja mountain range began on 19th September, on Spain's Canary Island of La Palma, scientists have been learning and exchanging more information about Strombolian eruptions than ever before. However, even they understand that against the forces of nature, especially those deep in the Earth's bowels, mankind has not got a chance.
What began as a sparkling and exciting event, with magma and gases creeping through volcanic tubes and pushing their way to the surface, like a kettle coming to the boil, soon turned into a nightmare, and devastation for inhabitants of La Palma.
Hundreds of homes have been buried under rivers of lava, swallowing up the memories of generations and turning some of the finest banana plantations into petrified, fuming rock, whilst treasured black-sand beaches have been smothered by smoldering lava. Inhabitants are also suffering
the consequences of the fallout, in the form of ash particles weighing down roofs and blanketing everything with something resembling powdered, black snow. Sulphur dioxide has poluted the air they breathe. COVID pandemic rules imply the compulsory wearing of
masks. Now people wear masks to protect their health, not from a man-spread
virus, but from the dangerous levels of volcanic debris and chemicals in the
air.
The island of La Palma, la isla
bonita, is over 50 miles away but we, on
the island of Tenerife, have memories of our own volcanoes, of course. One only has to
visit the great Las Cañadas caldera to realise that Mount Teide Volcano is just
a small hillock compared to what may have been there long before. We also have
written memories of the last eruption on the island, a little over 100 years
ago. Not only memories, but a feeling, not so deep down, that anything might happen one day. After all, as La Palma has come to remind us, the Canary Islands are still volcanically active.
On rare occasions we have felt the
minor Earth tremors that have been keeping people awake on La Palma. Some of us
remember, only a few years ago, before the under-sea eruption off the
island of El Hierro in 2011, that there were whispers about an imminent eruption on Tenerife. A series of earth
tremors, centred between the towns of Santiago del Teide and Icod, got people all het up. Even a few English newspapers told their readers that Teide was about to blow its top! A maximum register of 3.2 on
the Richter Scale was not much to worry about, but the coincidence of a number of
similar shakes over a period of weeks persuaded the authorities and scientists
to come clean about the fact that something might have been about to happen.
Although nothing actually did occur at the time, local gossip also led to similar conclusions. Tomás, the
lovely old gentleman from La Guancha who used to come with his lorry on
Saturdays to sell us home-grown fruit and vegetables, told us there was a cave
to the south of Icod from which nasty smelling gases had begun to appear. Mind
you he was also convinced that the unusually hot weather we had been having at the time was also
due to volcanic activity!
The
authorities tried to persuade public opinion that if anything did happen, it
would not be on a catastrophic scale. Indeed they believed, if it happened
at all, that it would be “a gentle, Strombolian eruption” which might perhaps start a
few forest fires and burn a house or two, but no more. Scientists supported
that belief. However, as La Palma has evidenced now, nobody can predict nor control
the damage an eruption might cause, or where exactly a volcano might decide to appear
in its explosive beginnings. Having said that, scientists, using modern equipment and satellite images, were almost exact in pinpointing where the Earth would give this time.
Perhaps memories of the last
eruption on the island of Tenerife, in 1909, had persuaded people that any eruption would be "gentle", until this new La Palma volcano.
Nevertheless, when Chinyero erupted, the municipality of the
Valley of Santiago was practically cut off from the rest of the world.
Messenger pigeons became the essential means of communication during the
eruption. The information carried by the birds took no more than 5 minutes to
reach Garachico from Santiago del Teide. From there, the news was then urgently transmitted to the authorities by telegram.
The eruption of Chinyero, however minor, produced a whole range of reactions. Fearful
inhabitants took their religious images up to the lava flows and legend suggests the
lava came to a halt where they stood. Victorian tourism found ways to
take advantage of the situation and a number of excursions were organised to
visit the volcano. Moreover, the Chinyero is famous for having been the
first volcano to have been mentioned in the press, and to have been filmed and
photographed. It is also the first to have been studied by contemporary
scientists and about which extensive, scientific reports were made.
Chinyero began to erupt just after two o'clock in the
afternoon of 18th November, 1909. Its activity lasted for 10 days, unlike the
new La Palma eruption which, as I write, is two months old and still going
strong. The eruption was preceded by a series of earth tremors and underground
noises which alerted the inhabitants in Santiago del Teide and neighbouring
regions. The eruptive process began when a 600 metre long crevice opened up and this was accompanied by loud explosions, heard as far away as La Laguna
and Santa Cruz. The eruptive column towered sky high. As one local resident
described,
“It gave a great
thundering sound and the plants and trees flew into the air with the smoke and earth. The
shrubs went up, turning over and over and were covered
in black and red earth. Huge stones were also flung out, everything spreading
out when it reached high up, and bits of gravel came down on us, so hot that we
could not hold them in our hands.”
There are also memorable tales about folk in the Orotava Valley. Some were brave enough to take a close look
at the eruption. I remember being told by Noel Reid that he witnessed the
eruption at close range. He was a lad of seventeen at the time and remembered
that there had been a series of earth tremors for a couple of months before the
eruption.
The first sign that the earth was
attempting to breathe was when news arrived that gases had appeared from a
cavity on the side of Mount Teide. Everyone thought the peak itself would erupt
and foreign residents hastily began to pack their bags. Many British residents took boxes and cases for safe-keeping at Casa Reid in Puerto de la Cruz or at El Nido, the Vice Consul, Tom Reid’s home, itself built in 1894 on the top of a volcanic rock. Some residents were invited to stay, resting wherever they could find space, indoors or
on the verandas.
From other parts of the island,
the noise of the explosions from the eruption could be heard like distant thunder, and the amazing red glow of lava
shooting into the sky were very spectacular. Local people were frightened. The
Bishop of La Laguna ordered everyone to pray. But the rumblings and the glow
seemed to go on for days without apparently causing great harm.
Therefore, like a number of others, Noel Reid and a group of mostly Spanish friends, including Anita Perez, a beautiful local girl who lived at a house called Los Frailes, could no longer resist the temptation. They decided to get a closer look and rode their horses as far as Icod de los Vinos, and up into the hills along the old carriage track.
They left their horses at a certain distance, for fear the animals would
become nervous as they neared the constant explosions, and walked higher into
the hills where they set up camp close to the inhospitable black, old lava flow
produced by another volcano, the Trevejos, which destroyed part of the original trading port of Garachico in 1706.
The following day, the intrepid group of adventures
then proceeded on foot to within half a mile of Chinyero, to see the earth flinging
rocks high in the air and spewing lava. Noel Reid, who just seven years later
was much closer to hell, earning the DSO for bravery at Ypres in the First World War, and his party of youngsters, were not the only ones to get a close
look at Chinyero.
Another member of the distinguished British
community, Austin Baillon, often recalled his own father, Alex Baillon’s
memories. According to him, the thunderous explosions could be heard from as far as the island of
Gran Canaria. People in nearby villages, like Guía de Isora, spent the best
part of a week in the streets. Seven craters opened up on a plain. Liquid stone
was blasted 600 feet into the sky and glowing lava gushed into the night in
four huge, slow-moving rivers, like immense burning snakes. Alex Baillon said
it was a splendid sight to see the frightful force of nature.
There is a tale about the priest of Tamaimo holding continuous prayers in the little chapel, begging for the lava not to reach them. It stopped just before the village.
Until the current
eruption of La Palma, it was hoped, and almost believed, that any future
eruption would be as safe and as obedient to Christian prayer as Chinyero, or
perhaps no worse than Chahorra, the fissure eruption that appeared on the side
of Pico Viejo, alongside Mount Teide in 1798.
One can only pray, in fact, judging by what we have witnessed these days on La Palma. Prayer, even for the non-believer, is all we have when nature decides the pressure has become too much.
BY JOHN REID YOUNG
Author of books:
THE SKIPPING VERGER AND OTHER TALES,
A SHARK IN THE BATH AND OTHER STORIES,
EL HOMBRE DE LA GUANCHA Y OTRAS HISTORIAS,
collections of short stories set in the Canary Islands,
THE JOURNALIST, a novel.
(For more information, please click on the images to the right of this page).
Owner of TENERIFE PRIVATE TOURS http://tenerifeprivatetours.com/
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