30 MISSING AFTER ECUADOR VOLCANO ERUPTS
By DOLORES OCHOA, Associated Press Writer Fri Aug 18, 7:54 PM ET
BANOS, Ecuador - Rescuers searched Friday for 30 people missing after
the devastating explosion of a volcano killed at least one person and forced tens of thousands to flee and appeared poised
for a new eruption.
Ecuador's Geophysics Institute urged residents and tourists who may
be tempted to witness the spectacle to stay away from the 16,575-foot Tungurahua volcano in the nation's central Andes.
"There is more potential
for it to do very big things. We see that there is a fault in the volcano and it is very unstable," institute head Hugo Yepes
said. "There is great activity inside."
The volcano is now quiet,
but geology professor Theofilos Toulkeridis, of Quito's San Francisco University, warned: "It is not
good news that the volcano is calm. That is not a good sign."
If Tungurahua remained plugged
up "at the upper part of the chimney" it would start to "accumulate gas and magma," he told The Associated Press. "The more
time that passes with it capped, the worse it is."
Volcanic ash rained down
about 140 miles west of Tungurahua, which exploded before dawn Thursday and smothered its lush green slopes in a dull gray
blanket of ash. Trees were singed bare by fiery volcanic flows.
Authorities had ordered
the evacuation of a dozen hamlets on the volcano's slopes. Ecuador's
Civil Defense said about 4,500 people were able to escape the rivers of fire — a horrific sight to villagers in the
middle of the frigid Andean night. A dozen people were hospitalized Friday for injuries and burns.
It was the 14th time Tungurahua
has sent hot lava and ash onto villages on its flanks since its first recorded eruption in the Spanish colonial era in 1534.
After remaining dormant for eight decades, Tungurahua rumbled back to life in 1999 and has been active ever since.
Carlos Puente, governor
of Chimborazo province, said 30,000 to 40,000 people had inhabited the western slopes, the
most damaged of the volcano, before the eruption, but that now "no one is left."
At least a dozen villages
on the volcano's western slopes were seriously damaged or destroyed, and televised images showed the tops of electricity poles
jutting from the smoldering flow that smothered more than 100 homes in the village
of Juibe Grande. Authorities said the village's 600 residents escaped
in time.
They were less sure about
the many holdouts who refused to answer evacuation orders Wednesday in three hamlets high on the slopes of the volcano, which
is some 85 miles south of the capital of Quito.
A doctor said about 50 people
from the village of Penipe
were treated for burns caused by "lava flows and incandescent rocks that burned them as they tried to flee."
"They were also burned by
vapor and the elevated heat in the zone. It was a scene of chaos, a Dantesque situation," Dr. Hernan Ayala told Ecuador's Channel 4 from a medical center in Riobamba,
where many of the victims were taken.
Rescuers recovered the body
of a 50-year-old man in Penipe who was burned to death when he tried to return to his home to retrieve a television set, Puente
said.
Hortensia Chicaiza and her
husband searched desperately through an ash-covered field for food for her livestock.
"Does God do this in other
places or does this only happen here?" she said as she pulled up fistfuls of ashy vegetation.
Pyroclastic flows —
superheated material that shoots down the sides of volcanos at up to 190 mph — damaged access roads and blocked three
rivers and forced the shutdown of a hydroelectric. Four jungle provinces were without power for hours until energy officials
were able to rerouted lines.