The long-dormant Chaiten volcano blasted ash some 30km into the Andean sky on Tuesday, forcing the last of thousands to evacuate and fouling a huge stretch of the South American continent.
A thick column of ash climbed into the stratosphere and blew eastward for hundreds of kilometers over Patagonia to the Atlantic Ocean, closing schools and a regional airport. Chilean and Argentine citizens were advised to wear masks to avoid breathing the dangerous fallout.
Chilean officials ordered the total evacuation of Chaiten, a small provincial capital in an area of lakes and glacier-carved fjords just 10km from the roiling cloud.
PHOTO: AP
Chilean Interior Minister Edmundo Perez said anyone still in the area should “urgently head to ships in the bay to be evacuated.”
More than 4,000 people were evacuated over the weekend and 350 more headed out on Tuesday.
Also emptied was the soot-coated border town of Futaleufu, about 120km from the volcano.
The five-day-old eruption is the first in 9,370 years, said Charles Stern, a volcanologist at the University of Colorado-Boulder who has studied Chaiten.
He said the nearby town could end up buried, much like the Roman city of Pompeii following Mount Vesuvius’ eruption in year 79.
Volcanic material from Chaiten’s last eruption measured up to 1.6m in places.
The gritty, gray-white blizzard of ash covered houses and roads.
Some people chose to remain in Futaleufu, donning masks when they dared to leave their homes.
About 1cm of ash coated the tourist town of Esquel, a Patagonian resort favored by backpackers and skiers at the foot of the Andes, where the airport and schools have been closed since Saturday.
The fallout covered a third of the province of Chubut, Provincial Governor Mario Das Neves said.
While volcanologists around the world eagerly awaited data on the scope of the eruption, one local expert got an up-close look when he accompanied police and air force teams over the 1,200m peak.
Volcanologist Juan Cayupi said by telephone that Chaiten’s two small craters had morphed into a large, single crater.
Lava was rising within the crater but has not yet spilled over, said Luis Lara, another volcanologist with the government’s Geology and Mining Service.
The Philippines yesterday said its coast guard would acquire 40 fast patrol craft from France, with plans to deploy some of them in disputed areas of the South China Sea. The deal is the “largest so far single purchase” in Manila’s ongoing effort to modernize its coast guard, with deliveries set to start in four years, Philippine Coast Guard Commandant Admiral Ronnie Gil Gavan told a news conference. He declined to provide specifications for the vessels, which Manila said would cost 25.8 billion pesos (US$440 million), to be funded by development aid from the French government. He said some of the vessels would
CARGO PLANE VECTOR: Officials said they believe that attacks involving incendiary devices on planes was the work of Russia’s military intelligence agency the GRU Western security officials suspect Russian intelligence was behind a plot to put incendiary devices in packages on cargo planes headed to North America, including one that caught fire at a courier hub in Germany and another that ignited in a warehouse in England. Poland last month said that it had arrested four people suspected to be linked to a foreign intelligence operation that carried out sabotage and was searching for two others. Lithuania’s prosecutor general Nida Grunskiene on Tuesday said that there were an unspecified number of people detained in several countries, offering no elaboration. The events come as Western officials say
Hundreds of thousands of Guyana citizens living at home and abroad would receive a payout of about US$478 each after the country announced it was distributing its “mind-boggling” oil wealth. The grant of 100,000 Guyanese dollars would be available to any citizen of the South American country aged 18 and older with a valid passport or identification card. Guyanese citizens who normally live abroad would be eligible, but must be in Guyana to collect the payment. The payout was originally planned as a 200,000 Guyanese dollar grant for each household in the country, but was reframed after concerns that some citizens, including
A plane bringing Israeli soccer supporters home from Amsterdam landed at Israel’s Ben Gurion airport on Friday after a night of violence that Israeli and Dutch officials condemned as “anti-Semitic.” Dutch police said 62 arrests were made in connection with the violence, which erupted after a UEFA Europa League soccer tie between Amsterdam club Ajax and Maccabi Tel Aviv. Israeli flag carrier El Al said it was sending six planes to the Netherlands to bring the fans home, after the first flight carrying evacuees landed on Friday afternoon, the Israeli Airports Authority said. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also ordered
RSS