Chile is preparing to evacuate another town in its Patagonian south on Monday because of ash that spewed from a snow capped volcano for a fourth day after its first eruption in thousands of years.
Michelle Bachelet, Chile's president, made a visit to the small town of Futaleufu where residents were packing their belongings that they will be carrying when the town gets evacuated.
Futaleufu
is the second town to be evaluated and it lies 100 miles southeast fo the erupting Chaiten volcano and about 810 miles south of the capital Santiago.
The volcano erupted on Friday and that caused a mushroom cloud as ash shot high into the sky and on Monday the volcano continued to shoot out ash and belch out hot gas which sent sooty emissions as far as Argentina.
Authorities in Chile were very surprised by the eruption because the volcano was considered inactive and there was no lava flow that was detected and now experts are not ruling out the possibility of a more violent eruption.
Bachelet said that her country is not sure what is going to happen with the volcano. Bachelet spoke to reporters in the town of Puerto Montt, where many of the town's residents have been evacuated.
She went on and said that they do not know if the volcano will continue to spew ash and if lave will appear and that is the reason why authorities are doing an early evacuation.
Argentina is where some of Futaleufu's 1,000 residents fled to but Argentina has some areas that have been showered with ash and some schools in the country were also closed and authorities even treated some students for breathing problems.
This is bizarre because the volcano has not erupted in over a thousand years and now all of a sudden it erupted from out of nowhere. I guess science and experts can not predict everything and they are not always right.
Erupting volcano prompts new evacuation in Chile
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