There is one small town located within the crater of the Pico do Fogo volcano and that is Cha das Caldeiras. The town has about 700 inhabitants and two main neighborhoods. The town sits at an elevation of 5,577 feet and the mountains on the west rise to 8,858 feet. The caldera itself is about six miles across and open to the east. We even came across some vineyards and a winery within the caldera and near Cha das Caldeiras.

The volcanic eruption in 1995 destroyed several houses in the village but the eruption in 2014 to 2015 destroyed 75 percent of the town's buildings. Some of the town's people left town for better prospects. But others of the town's people consider the volcano like a "father." The latter people are staying and rebuilding the town. In this post, I'll show some of the destruction of the town and the lava flows. In the first photo, you can see that the lava traveled in different routes towards the town.

The lava didn't necessarily follow consistent routes and the town looks odd with lava here and there but not all in a line.

Now for a couple of photos where the lava reached some houses but didn't destroy them.

And now for some houses that didn't make it through the last eruption. The flat cement slab on the left was the roof of a house. In the subsequent photo, I get closer and if you look on the lower left, you can see a bit of the house below the roof line.

The next photo is another house that got covered over with a lava flow where you can just see the roof. The two smaller units are rebuilds since 2015.