About sixty people were missing and 13 others injured after southern Ecuador’s Tungurahua volcano erupted violently early on Thursday, unleashing its highest level of activity since 1999, a local official said.
”The situation is indescribable. There are approximately 60 people missing in the highest-risk area, as well as seven wounded people who were taken to the city of Riobamba and six others wounded in Penipe,” Penipe mayor Juan Salazar told Ecuavisa television.
The mayor said the areas were affected by lava and flames from the 5 029m volcano, located just 135km south of Quito.
”There was a very powerful explosion this morning, which produced incandescent rocks, ash and lava that devastated several areas,” Salazar said.
Public safety officials said about 1 500 people were evacuated from the slopes of the volcano after it started spewing lava and ash in an eruption that followed a 4,7-magnitude earthquake to the south-east of the area.
Quito University’s Geophysical Institute had said earlier that the eruption could be bigger than one on July 14 that destroyed thousands of hectares of farmland and left about 10 000 people homeless.
”Approximately 1 500 people who had been evacuated [on July 14] had to leave their homes again in the villages of Cusua, Bilbao and Juiva, due to increased activity in the volcano,” said Mauro Rodriguez, a retired army colonel in charge of the evacuation. — AFP
