Families Evacuated, Following Rise In Seismic Activity In Colombia Volcano
Families living on the upper slopes of the Nevado Del Ruiz volcano in Colombia are being evacuated after an increase of seismic activity.
Colombia’s Geological Service (SGC) has raised the alert level from yellow to orange, warning that an eruption bigger than any in the past 10 years could occur in the coming days or weeks.
In 1985, the volcano caused Colombia’s deadliest natural disaster when heat from an eruption caused snow on its peak to melt.
The subsequent lahar, or mudslide, buried almost the entire town of Armero, which had 30,000 inhabitants.
In a statement, the SGC said that there had been minor eruptions of the volcano for the past 10 years but that its seismic activity had started to increase on 24 March.
Geologists say they have registered thousands of daily tremors, an unprecedented number since they began monitoring the volcano’s activity.
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Officials also shut down a popular national park that surrounds the Nevado del Ruiz volcano and said that schools located within a six-mile (10 kilometer) radius of the volcano’s crater will hold classes online only when children return home from Easter holidays next week.
“These are preventative measures” said Gov. Luis Carlos Velasquez of the Colombian province of Caldas, which is located to the west of the 17,000-foot-tall (5,300-meter-tall) volcano. Velasquez was speaking from the village of Villamaria, which is close to the volcano’s crater and was the first settlement to be evacuated.
Dozens of towns are located along rivers that originate near the top of Nevado del Ruiz. The volcano’s last major eruption took place in 1985. It unleashed mudslides that buried the town of Armero and killed about 25,000 people.
Last week Colombia’s national agency for risk management issued an orange alert for the volcano after it noticed a greater than normal amount of seismic activity near its crater. The alert indicates that an eruption is “probable” but not “imminent.” The volcano also spewed a 3,000-foot (900-meter) column of ashes on Sunday.
