AN ERUPTION

Hokitika Guardian, 9 June 1932, Page 8

AN ERUPTION

NINE VOLCANOES,

IN CHILEAN ANDES

LONDON, June 6

The eruption of nine volcanoes in the Chilean Ancles and Patagonia las. week led geologists in the atiecuu area to express too view that it mig..i be the prelude to somotlling worm- 1 Earthquakes and the emission o. poisonous gases were feared. Bot. Buenos Ayres and Montevideo were covered with ashes which ln.d been Clown a. great distance.. Plans wore made to evacuate the wnole population of Menduza province amounting to by railway il the situation became worse. In some oi tile towns cylinders of oxygen were rushed out for treatment of cities o. asphyxiation from volcanic gas- . Despite the remarkable nature oi the erupt.on, which blew volcani. debris so high into the air that ovci 3000 tons of it fell upon the city c< Buenos Aires 600 miles away, it war officially declared that no lives had been lost and no material damage done. Two million square kilometres is the total area on which the volcani. ashes have fallen.

TARAWERA RECALLED

Interviewed by the “Observer,” Dr H. H. Thomas, petrographer to the geological survey, said that ; as there were so many volcanoes in eruption simultaneously, it was likely that tlu pressure of the subterranean force-: would be relieved, and that the disturbances would gradually subside. “If,” he pointed but, “it had been on volcano of a large size that had broken out after a long period of inactivity, it would have been more likely to produce a catastrophic eruption than a series of them.”

The weakest part of the world is that, he eaicl, which forms the belts of country; bordering mountain chains, particularly where, like the Andes, they are near the seaboard. The Andean Range, he remarked, is a known line of weakness in t o earthfc crust, where there i>3 ail accumulation cf subterranean forces always liable to get a breakage through, the disturbances recurring at no specific intervals.

The history'of Vesuvius and a great number of volcanoes shows, he recalled that after long periods of quiescence they are liable to become active again. Mount Pelee, in the West Indies, had been long inactive, before the catastrophic eruption in 1901; so, too, hact Tarawera, in New Zealand —so lon,, in deed } that a lake had formed in it. crater, when it suddenly erupted in the latter half of last century, destroying the beautiful pink terraces in the North Island, and' doing a great amount of. damage.,

In tiie eruption of Krakntoa. in the East indies in the eighties, the dust went tip so high that it prac-tic ll.v encircled the earth and produced marvellous sunsets all over the world Whether there will be similar atmospheric effects following the eruptions in 'the Ancles depends upon their violence .and the height to which dust lias flown.