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http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/americas/08/18/ecuador.volcano.ap/index.html
BANOS, Ecuador (AP) -- Another violent explosion by Ecuador's Tungurahua
volcano was looming, experts said Friday, as rescuers searched through hot
rock and smothering ash for 30 people missing a day after a devastating
eruption that killed at least one person.
The head of Ecuador's Geophysics Institute, Hugo Yepes, urged everyone to
stay away from the 16,575-foot (5,023-meter) high volcano in the nation's
central Andes -- including tourists tempted to witness the spectacle.
"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 with the crater full" of
magma, Yepes said. "There is great activity inside."
He said it was "very risky" to approach the volcano, which was poised for
another explosion.
"It is not good news that the volcano is calm," geology professor Theofilos
Tuulkeridis of Quito's San Francisco University told The Associated Press.
He said Tungurahua, which means "throat of fire" in the native Quechua
language, is very active and plugs up at the upper part of its chimney,
which causes gases and magma to accumulate. "It is worse the more time that
passes with it plugged," Tuulkeridis said.
Thirty people missing
Civil defense officials said 30 of 60 people reported missing in the
overnight eruption that ended before dawn Thursday had made their way to the
homes of friends and relatives in nearby villages.
Police and soldiers continued searching for the remaining 30, who were
believed to have been caught by the volcanic eruption that showered the
region with incandescent rock and lava, sending thousands of residents
fleeing.
Juan Salazar, mayor of Penipe, one of the villages, was quoted by a Quito
radio station Friday saying officials had confirmed the death of four family
members who had been crushed in their house, which would bring the death
toll to five.
"This is an indescribable catastrophe," Salazar said.
But Carlos Puente, governor of Chimborazo province, told the AP on Friday
that civil defense officials could confirm the death of only one man, who
was burned to death when he tried to return to his home to retrieve a
television set.
Volcanic ash rained down about 140 miles (230 kilometers) to the west after
Tungurahua's 16,575-foot-high (5,023-meter-high) crater filled with magma
and then exploded overnight.
"Does God do this in other places or does this only happen here?" Hortensia
Chicaiza said Thursday as she desperately searched for food for her
livestock in ash-laden vegetation near Queros, 12 miles (20 kilometers)
northwest of the volcano.
Puente said the villages of Bilbao, Juibe Grande, Cusua, Pillate, Palitahua
and Puela were either totally destroyed or so severely damaged that they
were uninhabitable.
Televised images showed just the tops of electricity poles jutting out from
the smoldering pyroclastic flow that smothered 107 homes in Juibe Grande, on
the volcano's northwest slope. Authorities said that village's 600 residents
escaped.
They were less sure about the many holdouts who refused to heed evacuation
orders Wednesday in three hamlets high on the slopes of the volcano, which
is some 85 miles (135 kilometers) south of the capital of Quito.
The pyroclastic flow -- superheated material that shoots down the sides of
volcanoes like a fiery avalanche at up to 190 mph (300 kph) -- damaged roads
and blocked the Patate, Puela and Chambo rivers.
That forced the shutdown of the Agoyan hydroelectric plant about four miles
(six kilometers) from the volcano, denying power to all or part of four
jungle provinces in Ecuador.
'A scene of chaos'
Dr. Hernan Ayala said about 50 people from Penipe were treated for injuries
caused by falling hot rocks and superheated vapor.
"It was a scene of chaos, a Dantesque situation," Ayala told Ecuador's
Channel 4 from a medical center in Riobamba, where many of the victims were
taken. "There are six whom we consider the most grave, one of them with
burns over 85 percent of the body."
The ash cloud reached almost all the way from the Andes to the Pacific,
forcing flights between Quito and Ecuador's largest city of Guayaquil to be
suspended due to poor visibility.
Civil defense officials said about 4,500 people were able to escape the
rivers of fire.
President Alfredo Palacio said the government had released $2 million to
help people displaced by the eruption.
By daylight, Banos -- a popular tourist city of 18,000 at the northeast foot
of the volcano -- was covered in a thick gray, brown soup, its houses, cars
and roads smothered, its trees ripped bare.
Banos resident Gabriela Gonzalez went out at dawn with a cloth bag to
collect pieces of volcanic rock that had rained down.
"Later we will sell these to these same gringo" tourists, she said.
After remaining dormant for eight decades, Tungurahua rumbled back to life
in 1999 and has been active since.
BANOS, Ecuador (AP) -- Another violent explosion by Ecuador's Tungurahua
volcano was looming, experts said Friday, as rescuers searched through hot
rock and smothering ash for 30 people missing a day after a devastating
eruption that killed at least one person.
The head of Ecuador's Geophysics Institute, Hugo Yepes, urged everyone to
stay away from the 16,575-foot (5,023-meter) high volcano in the nation's
central Andes -- including tourists tempted to witness the spectacle.
"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 with the crater full" of
magma, Yepes said. "There is great activity inside."
He said it was "very risky" to approach the volcano, which was poised for
another explosion.
"It is not good news that the volcano is calm," geology professor Theofilos
Tuulkeridis of Quito's San Francisco University told The Associated Press.
He said Tungurahua, which means "throat of fire" in the native Quechua
language, is very active and plugs up at the upper part of its chimney,
which causes gases and magma to accumulate. "It is worse the more time that
passes with it plugged," Tuulkeridis said.
Thirty people missing
Civil defense officials said 30 of 60 people reported missing in the
overnight eruption that ended before dawn Thursday had made their way to the
homes of friends and relatives in nearby villages.
Police and soldiers continued searching for the remaining 30, who were
believed to have been caught by the volcanic eruption that showered the
region with incandescent rock and lava, sending thousands of residents
fleeing.
Juan Salazar, mayor of Penipe, one of the villages, was quoted by a Quito
radio station Friday saying officials had confirmed the death of four family
members who had been crushed in their house, which would bring the death
toll to five.
"This is an indescribable catastrophe," Salazar said.
But Carlos Puente, governor of Chimborazo province, told the AP on Friday
that civil defense officials could confirm the death of only one man, who
was burned to death when he tried to return to his home to retrieve a
television set.
Volcanic ash rained down about 140 miles (230 kilometers) to the west after
Tungurahua's 16,575-foot-high (5,023-meter-high) crater filled with magma
and then exploded overnight.
"Does God do this in other places or does this only happen here?" Hortensia
Chicaiza said Thursday as she desperately searched for food for her
livestock in ash-laden vegetation near Queros, 12 miles (20 kilometers)
northwest of the volcano.
Puente said the villages of Bilbao, Juibe Grande, Cusua, Pillate, Palitahua
and Puela were either totally destroyed or so severely damaged that they
were uninhabitable.
Televised images showed just the tops of electricity poles jutting out from
the smoldering pyroclastic flow that smothered 107 homes in Juibe Grande, on
the volcano's northwest slope. Authorities said that village's 600 residents
escaped.
They were less sure about the many holdouts who refused to heed evacuation
orders Wednesday in three hamlets high on the slopes of the volcano, which
is some 85 miles (135 kilometers) south of the capital of Quito.
The pyroclastic flow -- superheated material that shoots down the sides of
volcanoes like a fiery avalanche at up to 190 mph (300 kph) -- damaged roads
and blocked the Patate, Puela and Chambo rivers.
That forced the shutdown of the Agoyan hydroelectric plant about four miles
(six kilometers) from the volcano, denying power to all or part of four
jungle provinces in Ecuador.
'A scene of chaos'
Dr. Hernan Ayala said about 50 people from Penipe were treated for injuries
caused by falling hot rocks and superheated vapor.
"It was a scene of chaos, a Dantesque situation," Ayala told Ecuador's
Channel 4 from a medical center in Riobamba, where many of the victims were
taken. "There are six whom we consider the most grave, one of them with
burns over 85 percent of the body."
The ash cloud reached almost all the way from the Andes to the Pacific,
forcing flights between Quito and Ecuador's largest city of Guayaquil to be
suspended due to poor visibility.
Civil defense officials said about 4,500 people were able to escape the
rivers of fire.
President Alfredo Palacio said the government had released $2 million to
help people displaced by the eruption.
By daylight, Banos -- a popular tourist city of 18,000 at the northeast foot
of the volcano -- was covered in a thick gray, brown soup, its houses, cars
and roads smothered, its trees ripped bare.
Banos resident Gabriela Gonzalez went out at dawn with a cloth bag to
collect pieces of volcanic rock that had rained down.
"Later we will sell these to these same gringo" tourists, she said.
After remaining dormant for eight decades, Tungurahua rumbled back to life
in 1999 and has been active since.
