Tenerife holds second volcanic-eruption drill, tests alert system

Tenerife held its second large-scale volcanic-eruption response drill in two years on Thursday, testing evacuation and emergency procedures across the south of the island. The exercise, called Volcanex, was organised by the Tenerife island council (Cabildo) and involved about 70 public, scientific and emergency-management bodies and roughly 1,500 people.

The drill ran from seven in the morning until two in the afternoon and covered the municipalities of Guía de Isora, Santiago del Teide and Adeje. It opened with an ES-Alert warning sent to every mobile phone on the island at nine o'clock and a rise in the volcanic risk level to orange, declared by the island's advanced command post. A second ES-Alert, sent only to phones in Guía de Isora, ordered the simulated evacuation of the villages of Chirche and Aripe.

Tenerife council president Rosa Dávila ordered the evacuation of about 300 residents from those villages to a temporary shelter, in an exercise that also tested registering evacuees to track their situation during the operation. A hotel, a care home for the elderly and the Teide National Park and Corona Forestal nature reserve were also evacuated or closed as part of the drill.

Tourists staying at the Las Terrazas de Abama hotel in Guía de Isora were treated as confined to the hotel before being evacuated by bus to a safe area in Adeje, from where the exercise continued with their transfer to the airport and simulated boarding procedures, including coordination with consular officials. Residents of the Santa Gema care home in Santiago del Teide were evacuated using adapted transport after individual triage to determine their destination and needs.

Itahiza Domínguez, head of the National Geographic Institute in the Canary Islands, said during the exercise that assessing volcanic activity requires continuous monitoring of factors including seismic activity, ground deformation and gas emissions. Néstor Padrón, head of the Tenerife council's civil protection office, said activating a maximum alert is only the starting point for a response that requires planning, coordination and operational capacity.