Eruption tapering off on Spanish isle

LOS LLANOS DE ARIDANE, Canary Islands — A Spanish island volcano that has buried more than 500 buildings and displaced more than 6,000 people since last week lessened its activity Monday, although scientists warned that it was too early to declare the eruption phase finished.

Authorities ordered residents to stay indoors to avoid the unhealthy fumes from lava meeting seawater.

The plume of ash emerging from the main vent that opened Sept. 19. stopped early Monday, live footage of the Cumbre Vieja range broadcast by the public Canary Islands Television showed. But the column of ash and volcanic material returned after a two-hour hiatus.

“The volcano of La Palma has entered in a phase of lower activity,” the Madrid-based Institute of Geosciences said in a tweet. “Let’s see how it evolves in the coming hours.”

The archipelago’s volcanology institute published graphs showing a sharp decline in seismic activity in the area. “In the last hours the volcanic tremor has almost disappeared, as well as the strombolian explosive activity,” the research institute Involcan said on Twitter. But it had to follow up with a post announcing that, in addition to the ash cloud, “the re-emission of lava in the main cone is also confirmed.”

Experts were also on alert as the swarm of quakes that preceded and accompanied Spain’s first volcanic eruption on land in half a century moved south, with more activity detected in the island’s Fuencaliente area, Spain’s National Geographic Institute said.

“That the volcano is now less active doesn’t mean that it cannot change,” the institute’s top investigator, Stavros Meletlidis, told Antena 3, a private Spanish broadcaster.

Meanwhile, the island’s authorities advised residents in four neighborhoods to remain indoors to avoid toxic gases that could be released as a result of lava at more than 1,830 degrees meeting Atlantic Ocean water.