New rumbling from Chilean volcano worries experts Posted on May 16th
rumbled and shuddered on Thursday, raising new concerns among
authorities, as lightning bolts pierced the huge clouds of hot
ash hovering ominously above its crater.
Chile’s National Emergency Office, ONEMI, said heavy ash
kept shooting from the volcano in southern Chile as it
generated small tremors.
On the ground, heavy flooding hit the area around Chaiten
as falling ash swelled rivers, overflowing their banks.
“There’s been additional volcanic activity that we’re
really worried about,” regional governor Sergio Galilea told
reporters.
The Chaiten volcano, 760 miles south of the capital
Santiago, started erupting on May 2 for the first time in
thousands of years, spewing ash, gas and molten rock into the
air.
The government on Wednesday declared the town of Chaiten,
only six miles from the erupting volcano, off-limits for three
months and reported that about 90 percent of the town had been
flooded by the Blanco and Raya Rivers.
“The flooding has receded in terms of water. But there’s a
lot of material left, more mud than water,” Galilea said.
Rains are normal during the southern hemispheric winter in
Patagonia, but the deluge of volcanic ash has caused nearby
rivers to breach their banks.
No deaths have resulted, but thousands of people have been
evacuated within a 30-mile (48-km) radius, including the 4,500
residents of Chaiten.
The column of ash above the volcano, kept aloft by the
pressure of constant eruptions, rose as high as 20 miles (32
km) early in the eruption but has since fallen back to about
4.5 miles.
“The decision to evacuate was very opportune, as was the
decision to keep the zone clear for now,” said chief government
spokesman Francisco Vidal after a meeting with President
Michelle Bachelet on Thursday.
Chile’s chain of some 2,000 volcanoes — 500 of them
potentially active — is world’s second-largest after
Indonesia’s.
(Additional reporting by Damian Wroclavsky; Writing by Lisa
Yulkowski; Editing by Eric Walsh)
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