Oliver November 28, 2014 at 21:29
Here is a little bit of news from the eruption of Pico do Fogo, Fogo, Cape Verde – Islands I’ve just read:
Oceanpress.info says:
“The two main mouths of the volcano joined in one in the afternoon of Thursday, which increased the emission of lava threatening several houses.”
There are a few videos on this website showing the lava flow and people getting away from it. One video also shows the eruptive fissure:
[
link to www.oceanpress.info]
Marc Szeglat of the news blog of the German website Vulkane.net posted that several houses already have been destroyed and lava makes its way through the caldera in direction of the village Portela which could be destroyed in 3 days. The people fled to higher elevations, carrying their goods and chattels with them.
Marc and some friends are now on their way to the island, not only to report but also to help. He said that the volcano seems not to be monitored regular and now two volcanologists from the Canary Island have arrived to carry out gas measurements.
I just took a look at the island via Google Earth and discovered that several older (historic), but still dark looking lava flows made their way through the caldera and some also reached the sea. It was certainly not a quite good idea to build houses inside the caldera. I feel very sadly for this poor people.
For me this looks like a typical fissure eruption with weak explosive (most Strombolian) activity building small cinder cones and feeding aa lava flows, getting less explosive with time. The fissure seems to be on the lower flank of the main cone, so I suppose that effusive activity could last for a few weeks (not just draining of a small magma chamber, more like intrusion into a rift zone).