Guatemala City: At least 25 people were killed and nearly 300 wounded on June 3 in volcano eruption in Guatemala, a central American nation.
Officials said Guatemala’s Volcan de Fuego (Volcano of Fire) sent columns of ash 4 km into the sky.
The deceased included at least three children.
National disaster response spokesman David de Leon said on June 4 that particulate matter was falling in at least eight nearby towns.
The eruption, which began in the last week of May, and has intensified over recent days, created some striking images.
The volcano spewed an 8 kilometer stream of red hot lava and belched a thick plume of black smoke and ash that rained onto the capital and other regions.
The charred bodies of victims lay on the steaming, ashen remnants of a pyroclastic flow as rescuers attended to badly injured victims in the aftermath of the eruption.
It was the 3,763-meter volcano’s second eruption this year.
“It’s a river of lava that overflowed its banks and affected the El Rodeo village. There are injured, burned and dead people,” Sergio Cabanas, the general secretary of Guatemala’s national disaster management agency called Conred, said on radio.
The number of dead had risen to 25, including a Conred employee. Some 3,100 people have been evacuated from the area.
Officials said the dead were concentrated in three towns: El Rodeo, Alotenango and San Miguel los Lotes.
The volcano stands some 12,300 feet above sea level erupted 13 times last year.
In February 2015, the volcano experienced a powerful eruption that prompted the closure of the capital’s airport.
Dozens of videos appeared on social media and Guatemalan TV showing the extent of the devastation in the latest eruption.
One video published by news outlet Telediario, purportedly taken in the El Rodeo village, showed three bodies strewn atop the remnants of the flow as rescuers arrived to attend to an elderly man caked from head to toe in ash and mud.
In another video, a visibly exhausted woman, her face blackened from ash, said she had narrowly escaped as lava poured through corn fields.
“Not everyone escaped, I think they were buried,” Consuelo Hernandez told news outlet Diario de Centroamerica.
Steaming lava flowed down the streets of a village as emergency crews entered homes in search of trapped residents, another video on a different media outlet showed.
President Jimmy Morales said he had convened his ministers and was considering declaring a state of emergency in the departments of Chimaltenango, Escuintla and Sacatepequez.
The eruption forced Guatemala City’s La Aurora international airport to shut down its only runway due to the presence of volcanic ash and to guarantee passenger and aircraft safety, Guatemala’s civil aviation authority said on Twitter.
The volcano is some 40 km southwest of the capital, Guatemala City, and is close to the colonial city of Antigua, which is popular with tourists and is known for its coffee plantations.
Workers and guests were evacuated from La Reunion golf club near Antigua as a black cloud of ash rose from just beyond the club’s limits. The lava river was running on the other side of the volcano.
Officials said the volcanic eruption still presented a danger and could cause more mud and pyroclastic flows.
“Temperatures in the pyroclastic flow can exceed 700 degrees (Celsius) and volcanic ash can rain down on a 15-km radius. That could cause more mud flows and nearby rivers to burst their banks,” said Eddy Sanchez, director of Guatemala’s seismological, volcanic and meteorological institute.
The huge plumes of smoke that could be seen from various parts of the country and the ash that fell in four of Guatemala’s departments caused alarm among residents.
Guatemala, which literally means the place of many trees, is the most populated country in central America.
Source: Agencies