Your Move, Iceland: Chilean Volcano Continues to Erupt
A volcano in the Puyehue-Cordon-Caulle Volcano Complex (PCCVC) of southern Chile has been erupting since Saturday, forcing more than 3,500 people to evacuate their homes in the region and canceling airplane flights as well. An ash cloud six miles high and three miles wide has been spewed from the volcano. So far there have been no reports of injuries, which is always a relief.
The PCCVC is comprised of four volcanoes and is one of the main exploration sites for geothermal power in the country.
“The situation is very complicated,” said Santiago Rozas, mayor of Lago Ranco, a town about 40 miles north of the eruption, reports the AP. “The shift means that we will have a rain of ash, with damage for the population and a threat to smallholder farming.”
The eruption of the Puyehue Volcano is not such as surprise to geologists, who say the eruption could have been triggered in part by last year’s 8.8 magnitude earthquake.
“People have seen that volcanic activity can be triggered within 100 km of the earthquake, though no one knows the mechanisms behind this,” Pyle told New Scientist.
One possibility might be an increase in stress levels in the ground underneath a volcano following a quake. “The 2010 earthquake meant a fault system 500 km long slipped by a few metres at a depth of 20-30 km,” says Pyle. The shift could have compressed the magma under the volcano, making it more likely to erupt, he suggests.
Chile has some 3,000 volcanoes running the length of the country scattered throughout the Andes Mountains. Of those, only 500 or so are considered active volcanoes. There have been 60 eruptions recorded over the last 450 years.
This is the first major eruption of the volcano chain since the 1960s, following the 1960 Valdivia earthquake, the largest recorded earthquake in history.
The BBC has a gallery of images that is just astounding in their beauty, but frightening in their meteorologic implications. Be sure to check out The Daily Mail’s gallery as well. Insanity.
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