- Joined
- Dec 6, 2010
- Messages
- 33,612
- Reaction score
- 5,997
Looks like they're having it a lot worse than Hawaii.
The death toll from Guatemala's Fuego volcano eruption keeps rising, and now more hazards threaten grieving residents.
At least 62 people were killed after the volcano erupted Sunday, spewing a river of lava and plumes of smoke almost 6 miles into the air, said Mirna Celedon, spokeswoman for Guatemala's Institute of Forensic Sciences. Thirteen of the dead have been identified so far.
Survivor Consuelo Hernandez told the disaster agency some of her relatives were buried.
"Not everyone escaped, I think they were buried," Hernandez said in a video released by CONRED, the government agency for disaster reduction. "We saw the lava was pouring through the corn fields, and we ran toward a hill."
The Guatemala eruption stirred recent memories of Hawaii's Kilauea eruption, which terrorized Big Island on May 3.
But the Fuego eruption is much deadlier -- for several reasons.
Unlike the Hawaii volcano, which has destroyed homes with slow-moving lava, the Fuego volcano unleashed fast-moving pyroclastic flow -- a nasty mix of ash, rock and volcanic gases that can be much more dangerous than lava.
Pyroclastic flows can race down a volcano at hundreds of kilometers per hour -- much faster than people or even cars.
To make matters worse in Guatemala, "villages are right on the foothills of the mountain," CNN meteorologist Ivan Cabrera said. "So they had no time (to escape)."
https://www.cnn.com/2018/06/04/americas/guatemala-fuego-volcano-erupts/index.html
The death toll from Guatemala's Fuego volcano eruption keeps rising, and now more hazards threaten grieving residents.
At least 62 people were killed after the volcano erupted Sunday, spewing a river of lava and plumes of smoke almost 6 miles into the air, said Mirna Celedon, spokeswoman for Guatemala's Institute of Forensic Sciences. Thirteen of the dead have been identified so far.
Survivor Consuelo Hernandez told the disaster agency some of her relatives were buried.
"Not everyone escaped, I think they were buried," Hernandez said in a video released by CONRED, the government agency for disaster reduction. "We saw the lava was pouring through the corn fields, and we ran toward a hill."
The Guatemala eruption stirred recent memories of Hawaii's Kilauea eruption, which terrorized Big Island on May 3.
But the Fuego eruption is much deadlier -- for several reasons.
Unlike the Hawaii volcano, which has destroyed homes with slow-moving lava, the Fuego volcano unleashed fast-moving pyroclastic flow -- a nasty mix of ash, rock and volcanic gases that can be much more dangerous than lava.
Pyroclastic flows can race down a volcano at hundreds of kilometers per hour -- much faster than people or even cars.
To make matters worse in Guatemala, "villages are right on the foothills of the mountain," CNN meteorologist Ivan Cabrera said. "So they had no time (to escape)."
https://www.cnn.com/2018/06/04/americas/guatemala-fuego-volcano-erupts/index.html
Last edited:
