HONG KONG:: Chile’s Calbuco volcano erupted for the third time in eight days on Thursday, sending a new cloud of ash and gas high into the sky, although officials said the latest eruption was less powerful than those of last week.
The volcano spewed more than 200 million tons of ash last week, coating nearby towns, wrecking parts of the salmon industry and forcing the cancellation of flights as far away as Buenos Aires, which is 870 miles from Calbuco
Although the volcano was quiet this week, geological officials had warned it was still unstable and could erupt again. The new eruption began at 1:09 p.m., according to Sernageomin, the national geology and mining office.
“This emission should begin to weaken in the coming hours … but we are in an eruptive process, on red alert, and the situation can change at any time,” said Sernageomin head Rodrigo Alvarez.
Calbuco, one of the most active in a chain of around 2,000 volcanoes in Chile, is in the scenic Los Lagos region, a popular tourist destination around 620 miles south of the capital, Santiago.
TV pictures showed a thick, grey plume spreading quickly into the sky on Thursday afternoon. It was heading southeast over the Andes into Argentina, said government meteorologist Arnaldo Zuniga.
LATAM Airlines’ Chilean arm LAN, which cancelled some flights last week as a precaution because of the ash cloud, said flights in Chile and Argentina were unaffected so far.
A 12-mile exclusion zone has remained in place around the volcano since the first sudden eruption on April 22, but some residents have been making short visits to their homes to begin clearing away thick layers of ash and debris.
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