EL PASO – The image is now all over the world. A small white house that seems to stand on an island in the middle of a black smoking sea. This sea is formed by the lava of the erupted volcano Cumbre Vieja on La Palma. The house has been saved!
Image by Alfonso Escalero – I love the world
The photos, taken by photographer Alfonso Escalero and published on the Facebook page I love the world* (where, by the way, are many more impressive photos of the eruption and its consequences), showed how miraculously the house is completely surrounded by two lava tongues that reunite under the house.
It is now known that the owners of this ‘wonder house’ are Inge and Rainer Cocq, a retired Danish couple, who have not been on the island since the start of the corona pandemic. As they are in their 80s and didn’t want to risk getting infected.
Therefore, good friend Ada told them what had happened. “When I saw the photo on Facebook, I was shocked and tried to enlarge the photo just to be sure. So I immediately called my boyfriend and we were both crying,” she recalled in an interview with TVE.
Mixed emotions
After hearing the news, the Danish couple experienced a jumble of emotions. They said, “it is a joy and sadness at the same time. You cannot express your feelings because they change overnight.” Their friend Ada says her friends in Denmark are still ’emotional’. But they are calmer and happy that the worst is over for them. However, they hope an entrance can be created so they can go to their house in the near future.
* ILovetheWorld is an innovative Spanish audiovisual start-up, content specialist in professional virtual reality on land, at sea, and in the air thanks to the development of its own technology. In the short existence of the company, it has been recognised by the Ministry of Tourism of Spain, with the nomination for the Medal of Merit in Innovation and Tourism Promotion.
