ESCUINTLA, GUATEMALA: Villagers and farmers living at the foot of a Guatemalan volcano say they were awoken by a massive roar when the long-simmering Volcan del Fuego exploded with a series of eruptions that darkened the skies and covered the surrounding sugar cane fields with ash.
As the Volcan del Fuego, or Volcano of Fire, spewed rivers of bright orange lava down its flanks on Thursday, authorities ordered more than 33,000 people in 17 nearby communities evacuated. Many of those near the volcano are indigenous Kakchikeles people who live in relatively poor and isolated communities.
Hundreds of cars, trucks and buses, blanketed with charcoal gray ash, drove away from the volcano, which sits about six miles (16 kilometers) southwest of the colonial city of Antigua, toward the Guatemala city. Thick clouds of ash reduced visibility to less than 10 feet in the area of sugar cane fields surrounding the volcano. The elderly, women and children were evacuated in old school buses and ambulances.
But many people refused to leave their homes, said Jose Martinez, who volunteered the bus he uses as a shuttle at the nearby Grupo Pantaleon sugar cane plantation to move people away from the volcano.
“Some people think that this will pass and others think their things won’t be there when they go back,” Martinez said.
n FROM: THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Authorities set up a shelter at an elementary school in Santa Lucia, the town closest to the volcano, and by Thursday night some 750 people had arrived. Most were women and children carrying blankets and going into bare classrooms.
Families mostly made up of small children and toddlers waited patiently as teachers who had volunteered to assist in rescue efforts took their names, deciding which of the 22 rooms filled with top to bottom murals they would be sleeping in. Soldiers unloaded water, orange soda and food from trucks.
Carumaco, who was at the shelter with her family, said parents sent their children to school despite the darkening skies, but that classes were later cancelled and teachers walked them home.
“The kids were home by 10 a.m. They were laughing because they’re too young to have seen something like this but they were also coughing and I was very worried,” she said.
Guatemala’s head of emergency evacuations, Sergio Cabanas, said the ash was blowing south-southeast.
n FROM: THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Guatemalan eruption sparks evacation
