The Tierra Bonita Association, with the support of the Citizens’ Initiative to Support Those Affected by the Eruption and the Agua para La Palma Association, and through the Martínez-Echevarría law firm, has filed a criminal complaint before the Courts of Los Llanos de Aridane against the steering committee and the scientist with responsibility for the Canary Islands Volcanic Emergency Plan (pevolca) for alleged crimes of prevarication, injuries and damages.
The complainants detail in a statement that “they intend to demonstrate that the eruption, although it was inevitable, was indeed foreseeable, in terms of civil protection, but the appropriate measures were not adopted that would have reduced the material damage and the health of the population, as well as to animals, and thousands of people would not have been exposed to serious risk of death.”
Along these lines, they regret that a general preventive evacuation was not even carried out before the eruption, despite the “very obvious objective signs of its imminence, with a clear intensification in the previous days and hours, and that the area had been perimetered.” where there was a greater probability of this dangerous phenomenon occurring”.
According to the complainants, there was a “negligent, reckless, reckless and criminal” action by the authorities, which resulted in “serious damage”, not only with the loss of property but also in health and emotional well-being and psychological of the citizens.
They also indicate that the Pevolca protocol “establishes with crystal clarity” that in the event of an imminent eruption the alert level or volcanic traffic light must go from yellow to, at least, orange, which implies the preventive evacuation of the entire population at risk, This recommendation does appear in the report of the Scientific Committee on September 19, “but it would not be carried out.”
“Only luck, and not the emergency plan, prevented fatalities from occurring at the start of the eruption, since if the eruptive mouths had opened a few hundred meters from the place where the catastrophe began, today we would be lamenting a tragedy with deaths from that first moment”, they comment.
The complainants also point out that there was “scientific evidence” about the volcanic reactivation of La Palma since 2017 and “without the population being officially informed or having a major consequence in territorial planning or in the granting of construction licenses in the field of Cumbre Vieja or in recommendations for the insurance of assets”.
