Experts: Pressure building up inside Ecuador volcano
Pastor Dale Morgan
Experts: Pressure building up inside Ecuador volcano*
Saturday, August 19, 2006 Posted: 0103 GMT (0903 HKT)
BANOS, Ecuador (AP) -- Rescuers Friday searched for 30-60 people missing
after the devastating explosion of a volcano killed at least one person,
forced tens of thousands to flee and appeared poised for a new eruption.
Ecuador's Geophysics Institute urged residents and tourists who may be
tempted to witness the spectacle to stay away from the 16,575-foot
(5,023-meter) Tungurahua volcano in the nation's central Andes.
"There is more potential for it to do very big things. We see that there
is a fault in the volcano and it is very unstable," institute head Hugo
Yepes said. "There is great activity inside."
The volcano is now quiet. But geology professor Theofilos Toulkeridis,
of Quito's San Francisco University, warned: "It is not good news that
the volcano is calm. That is not a good sign."
If Tungurahua remained plugged up "at the upper part of the chimney" it
would start to "accumulate gas and magma," he told The Associated Press.
"The more time that passes with it capped, the worse it is."
Volcanic ash rained down about 140 miles west of Tungurahua, which
exploded before dawn Thursday and smothered its lush green slopes in a
dull gray blanket of ash. Trees were singed bare by fiery volcanic flows.
Authorities had ordered the evacuation of a dozen hamlets on the
volcano's slopes. Ecuador's Civil Defense said about 4,500 people were
able to escape the rivers of fire -- a horrific sight to villagers in
the middle of the frigid Andean night. A dozen people were hospitalized
Friday for injuries and burns.
It was the 14th time Tungurahua has sent hot lava and ash onto villages
on its flanks since its first recorded eruption in the Spanish colonial
era in 1534. After remaining dormant for eight decades, Tungurahua
rumbled back to life in 1999 and has been active ever since.
Carlos Puente, governor of Chimborazo province, said 30,000 to 40,000
people had inhabited the western slopes, the most damaged of the
volcano, before the eruption but that now "no one is left."
At least a dozen villages on the volcano's western slopes were seriously
damaged or destroyed, and televised images showed the tops of
electricity poles jutting from the smoldering flow that smothered more
than 100 homes in the village of Juibe Grande. Authorities said the
village's 600 residents escaped in time.
They were less sure about the many holdouts who refused to answer
evacuation orders Wednesday in three hamlets high on the slopes of the
volcano, which is some 85 miles south of the capital, Quito.
A doctor said about 50 people from the village of Penipe were treated
for burns caused by "lava flows and incandescent rocks that burned them
as they tried to flee."
"They were also burned by vapor and the elevated heat in the zone. It
was a scene of chaos, a Dantesque situation," Dr. Hernan Ayala told
Ecuador's Channel 4 from a medical center in Riobamba, where many of the
victims were taken.
Rescuers recovered the body of a 50-year-old man in Penipe who was
burned to death when he tried to return to his home to retrieve a
television set, Puente said.
Hortensia Chicaiza and her husband searched desperately through an
ash-covered field for food for her livestock.
"Does God do this in other places or does this only happen here?" she
asked as she pulled up fistfuls of ashy vegetation.
Pyroclastic flows -- superheated material that shoots down the sides of
volcanoes at up to 190 mph -- damaged access roads, blocked three rivers
and forced the shutdown of a hydroelectric power plant. Four jungle
provinces were without power for hours until energy officials were able
to rerouted lines.