More than 4,000 people forced to evacuate, many to neighboring Argentina.
The 3,550-foot-high Chaiten Volcano in southern Chile, 760 miles south of Santiago,
began erupting May 2, for the first time in 9,370 years. But the 20-mile-high blast of ash and lava on Monday, May 5, 2008, forced more than 4,000 people to evacuate Chaiten and Futaleufu.
Residents in Esquel, Argentina, wore surgical masks
on May 5, 2008, after ash from the Chaiten volcano blew over the Andes
mountains and into parts of Argentina, closing schools and a regional
airport. Copyright 2008 Municipalidad Esquel via Reuters.
Charles Stern, a volcanologist at the University of Colorado-Boulder, who has studied Chaiten, said the nearby town could end up buried like the Roman city of Pompeii after the 79 A. D. eruption of Mount Vesuvius.
No comments:
Post a Comment