Puyehue Volcano Erupts In Chile, Hundreds Evacuate

SANTIAGO, Chile — The Puyehue volcano in southern Chile erupted Saturday, sending a huge plume of smoke and ash into the sky and prompting officials to evacuate about 600 people living nearby. There were no reports of injuries.

Authorities had put the area around the volcano on alert Saturday morning after a flurry of earthquakes, and the eruption began in the afternoon. The National Emergency Office said it recorded an average of 230 tremors an hour.

On the other side of the Andes in Argentina, heavy ash fell on the city of San Carlos de Bariloche.

Officials warned residents of the area around the city to take precautions against a possible prolonged ashfall. They urged people to stock up on food and water and to stay home.

The volcano is nearly 500 miles (800 kilometers) south of Chile's national capital, Santiago.

Comments

[Ana4]

02:47 PM on 06/12/2011

What's up with the m0deration here?
Disconnecting polite conversations and withholding information, but allowing inane, silly, and insulting remarks to pass...No wonder so many have stopped bothering to visit HuffPost at all.
If you're trying to destroy your base readership, you're doing a good job.

[jl42]

01:34 PM on 06/06/2011

%u201CChile is in the Ring of Fire.

On March 11th a 6.9 magnitude earthquake occurred in El Libertador which is one of the 3 cities that Chile is thinking of building a nuclear power plant in!

The second city they're considerin­g is Coquimbo which also registers earthquake­s.

The third city, Antofagast­a, has registered earthquake­s, too.

And now Chile's volcano erupts. Erupting volcanoes can trigger earthquake­s.

Conclusion­: NO nuclear power plants should be built in Chile.%u201D

[donbrown]

09:26 PM on 06/05/2011

Why no coverage of the SECOND major eruption in two days? -- Popocatepetl.

Anti-Mexican bias?

[gatolulu]

04:15 PM on 06/05/2011

God is trying to get our attention. Wake up, humans!

[jdrabe]

02:13 PM on 06/05/2011

Hey Cantor, now we have something to trade: no aid to the dictators in Chile in exchange for aid to the US tornado vicitms

[GordonNYC]

09:43 PM on 06/05/2011

Who's Cantor? Is Obama still the Pres. of the US?

[Hollass]

07:52 PM on 06/11/2011

Not for long, but it's going to be hard to evict him & family from white house! Better serve eviction notice NOW!!!!

[wrascil]

01:48 PM on 06/05/2011

What caused the global warming that caused the ice age and extinction of the dinosaur ? ? Rumor has it the emissions of Fred and Barney's Flintstone special racing back and forth to Mr. Slates rock quarry caused it. Fact is the global thermal nuclear war between rivaling Neanderthal tribes over limited blubber supply's wiped out all evidence. Shortly afterwards the volcanic period covered the earth with precious metals, stones and diamonds from it's molten core, while spewing billions of tons of C02, sulphur dioxide, and ash to smother all life on the planet except the smallest of single celled organisms luckily Adam found refuge in his well stocked cave with his evil mate Eve, they later emerged into a garden of Eden to gaze upon a massive hole in the ozone layer....... but that's another fable

[dbarr24]

01:35 PM on 06/05/2011

Got 37 fanns...................in my PANTS!!!

[dbarr24]

01:33 PM on 06/05/2011

*smokkin ciggetettes and watchin captain kangaroo*

[dbarr24]

12:13 PM on 06/05/2011

moderatores......i trully dispise you, no joke. I have a voodoo doll of you right here that I am prikking as you read this

[Sherylynne Klein]

01:39 PM on 06/05/2011

No oversight after proven trustworthy isn't working too well, is it? Many feel your same discontent.

[Joebudgie]

11:14 AM on 06/05/2011

So many people expect the World to just stay static with no changes, just a constant mild Spring Day all over the globe. Well, it ain't gonna happen. Whether you take the cold scientific route or follow a religeous creation belief the universe has been in a state of constant change since the beginning. That inclludes movement of the continents, volcanic eruptions, an occasional Ice Age alternating with a desert, and everything in between. No matter what mankind does in his puny civilization that process isn't going to stop because it's inconvenient or scary. Earthquakes, volcano eruptions, tornados or hurricanes are not casued by anything man has control over. Get used to it.

[enviro1]

12:35 PM on 06/05/2011

I agree with you 100%, not only that, but it appears that the poles are shifting....the Earths' axis has also shifted ever so slightly due to the severe quakes that have happened as of late...it seems like we are headed into a slightly more active time period....which could last thousands of years......

[deeberg13]

12:46 PM on 06/05/2011

We are in the middle of the age of plants and animals and the shifting of continental plates. This will not last forever. Once the earth cools sufficiently, plate tectonics will cease. The earth will then slowly become an ice ball, with minimal weather and tides (the moon will be gone by then). This will close the curtain on the age of plants and animals, and man, if he is still stuck on this planetary speck. The good news - billions of years in the future.

[Ana4]

02:47 PM on 06/11/2011

It's the Magnetic POLARITY of the Earth that is shifting, not the Poles.
Reference a tectonic map of the sea floor; it's happened many times before and no the poles don't flip. The basaltic base of the sea-bed ophiolite record the changes in magnetic polarity over the eons. And again, NO--the poles don't flip. They wobble.

[jqbjay]

04:17 PM on 06/05/2011

But.....Al gore says.....................................

[mijsenrab]

11:01 AM on 06/05/2011

Waiting for bama to blame the volcano on Bush.

[Sherylynne Klein]

01:40 PM on 06/05/2011

Probably won't take too long.

[westoverallen]

03:24 PM on 06/05/2011

it was Him i seen him do it, it is always gonna be dubyas fault no matter what

[smp276dp]

10:40 AM on 06/05/2011

So we now know what was next. Chile's monster is set free. Okay next on the menu?
No I am not going to explain sorry.

[marsjo]

10:17 AM on 06/05/2011

How does one become a troll? Why are trolls so easy to spot? Do you notice anything so common to all their posts that make you wonder what they get out of being a troll. Why are trolls so particularly hyper about the environment?

My viewpoint on trollies is that they are predominately legend believers, myth believers and toe and tow the party line as written by oligharchs. Sarcastic remarks about science always seem to be the common thread when it come to the environment. I think the reason that they're so particularly hyper about the environmental sciences is that they are all regressive and reactionary and resistant to change, until of course, their place is flooded, burned, tornado chewed into tiny bits, or buried in snow.

Yep, volcanos spew ash, CO2 and other noxious gases and do so all the time. Humans do so at a rate generally accepted to be about 200 times more than the mean output of earth's volcanos. We can't do much about volcanos but with intelligence we can do something and many countries are doing something about the human output. Propaganda by polluting profitieering plutocrats has anti-environmentalists wrapped around their proverbial little finger and what always seems so prevalent among the "pollutionists" is their penchant for delight when they're giving environmentalists the middle finger via their comments. In my opinion, that's just juvenile. Denial is not a virtue, or a value to be respected. Denial is a pathological condition, plain and simple.

[dbarr24]

11:00 AM on 06/05/2011

but I guess "moderators" lookout for ":superusers" on huffington. Someone has to I guess. Birds of a feather. Birdbrains.You arnt really trolls, more like midgets

[Joebudgie]

11:03 AM on 06/05/2011

So you are a Super User. Do you have any idea what you are trying to say in your comment? I don't thank very many other people do. Just what is your point here? What are you trying to say? That it's juvenile for other people to have an opinion but OK for you?

[caroleann926]

01:39 PM on 06/05/2011

He's probably just a kid trying to get attention.

[shhurtjr]

10:14 AM on 06/05/2011

I wonder what the world will be like 100 years from now.

[bellaluna30]

10:18 AM on 06/05/2011

Whatever it's like, I'm betting there will a lot less people in it.

[smp276dp]

10:40 AM on 06/05/2011

You know what I am not going to be on board so good luck to those hanging on.

[mijsenrab]

10:58 AM on 06/05/2011

People will still be talking about the American people taking back their country and throwing obama-reid-pelosi from office in 2012!

[dbarr24]

09:47 AM on 06/05/2011

remember a couple months back, that evangelist, he was a christian or a scientologist or something like that, said that the people of japan were being punished?

[dbarr24]

10:44 AM on 06/05/2011

maybe its his fault that the bible-belt has been hit with all those tornadeos

[plzr56]

10:49 AM on 06/05/2011

That's possible, but who knows for sure? He was assuming those facts and using them for his own benefit. Actually, when it first happened, that was also my first thought. But why? Because they started WW11 or because their Toyotas weren't up to snuff for a while. We will just have to guess about that one.