Wednesday, July 26, 2006




 July 15th, 2006

There was a big show last night from gramma (the biggest I've seen). Fran said that usually volcanos don't have both lava and ash, but I think these should satisfy him that it does happen sometimes. I took a lot of pictures, and a lot of them are really good, but I don't have the bandwidth to send all of them.

Here in Salasaca we are lucky. Wind patterns take the ash to the south of us. The smoke eventually stretched all the way from Tungurahua to Chimborazo, which is about 60 degrees on the horizon, within about an hour before it got dark and I couldn't tell anymore. Supposedly, wind patterns carry the ash all the way to Guayaquil.

Anyway, there were window rattling explosions all night. Today it is cloudy, so I can't see anything. I am not too afraid for Salasaca, but I am worried about the people in areas nearby (lets say, about 10 miles to the south of us). The danger for them is really that they are farmers and that the ash will result in the end of their crops and the death of their animals (their main assets/form of savings). Of course, nearby the volcano there are big dangers of lahores or whatever those mud flows are called.

On TV I've seen the ash in places like Quero, which are closeby. I am guessing from the photos about a centimeter of ash, which isn't putting houses and people in danger, but is rough on the cows, mostly because their food is covered with ash, so they have nothing to eat. As I said though, the prevailing wind from the east almost always takes the ash in a southern direction (as you can see in the pictures), so I am in no danger and neither are the mule nor the cows nor the pigs here.

For the last couple of hours, I've heard nothing. Of course nobody really knows enough about volcanos to say if there will be a real eruption or just more minor explosions like the ones I've described. The mayor of Banos is of course happily saying that this is an exciting show and everyone should come visit. Meanwhile various residents of Banos are abandoning ship for the time being (there is no mandatory evacuation like there was 7 years ago). I am listening to a call in show right now where people not from Banos are just pissed that the mayor of Banos is downplaying everything to get tourists, because of course that means that the issue isn't being taken seriously in the rest of the country.






1 Comments:

Blogger Brian said...

Wow--some really amazing pictures!
Brian
www.irunfororphans.com

4:13 PM  

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