The population of Chã das Caldeiras, totaling around 1,000 inhabitants, spent the night outside their homes due to the strong earthquakes,[3] and started being evacuated when the eruption began.

[4] During the first days of eruption, a 3.5 km stretch of the southern basalt paved road that connected São Filipe was covered with lava.

On 1 December, the lava flow rate was 15 meters an hour and it had engulfed 400 ha of land, destroyed 18 houses and was nearing the village center.

Into the second round of competition, as the Baxada-Nô Pintcha and Spartak-Academica were about to begin that day after the noon hour, as the eruption started four hours before the scheduled match, the second round was delayed and the Spartak d'Aguadinha-Académica match was rescheduled for 14 December and the Baxada-Nô Pintcha for 17 December.

Lava flow reached most of the middle of the edge of Bordeira in the village as well as the foot of Pico de Caldera, the southernmost and the west rim.

The village of Portela in the Chã das Caldeiras is now covered by a lava stream which has completely destroyed the housing stock.

According to activity made by geologist José Madeira at the University of Lisbon and Instituto Dom Luiz, the total lava flow spewed between 100 and 125 million tons and destroyed buildings, agricultural land and different infrastructures and forced the displacement of about 1,000 people from two villages.

[10] At the start of the eruption the volcanic clouds headed south towards to Atlantic over the area of Achada Furna and Patim and hovered about 3,000–4,000 meters above sea level up to around 8,000 meters 100 km south and at the highest at 10 km above sea level and went as far as 200 to 300 km, a low pressure front later prevent it from going further, it also covered the areas of Monte Largo, Monte Grande, Salto, Vicente Dias and Fonte Aleixo and went close to São Filpe and its airport.

During the cloud cover, the only airport in the southwest of the country was closed and had their flights cancelled from the start of the eruption up to late December.

The British geologist David Rothery also posted a blog article "Why have we heard so little about the devastating Cape Verde volcano?"

At the end of the article, Rothery placed a provocative question "Or do we care about volcanoes only if there's a chance of them inconveniencing our air-travel plans?"

Civil engineer and politician Eunice Silva was in charge of the response to the eruption, including provision of housing, money and employment to those affected.

Some of these were Echium vulcanorum, Erysimum caboverdeanum (wild carnation), Verbascum cystolithicum (black grass) and Lavandula rotundifolia (aipo).