Bogota – Authorities in southwestern Colombia declared a state of emergency so that some 8,000 people can be evacuated from areas surrounding the Galeras volcano, which began erupting on Wednesday.
The governor of Nariño province, Eduardo Zuñiga, called via radio for the evacuation of the residents of several villages near the peak of the Andean volcano, which has been spewing gases, ash, smoke and some rocks.
The eruption prompted the government to increase the level of its alert in the region, according to the Volcanological and Seismological Observatory in Pasto, the capital of Nariño.
Several seismic tremors preceded Wednesday’s “explosive” eruption, according to scientific authorities.
“Some 2,200 families must be evacuated from the upper areas of the towns of Genoy, Florencia, Nariño and Consaca, in which some 8,000 people live,” Zuñiga said.
Pasto, which has around 400,000 residents and from where one can see an enormous column of smoke emanating from the volcano, is not at risk at the moment, the governor added.
The director of the Ingeominas geology and mining institute, Julian Villarruel, said that “an eruption (is) in progress.”
In towns in the area, a rain of ash has been falling since the eruption began, and closer to the mountain’s peak, stones and sandy material blown out of the volcano’s cone have been coming down.
The Pasto City Hall and the Nariño government, with the help of the national goverment, set up shelters to house more than 8,000 people living near the volcano when it entered an active phase at the end of last year.
