Japanese island evacuated as volcano erupts ... again
Print Edition
A VOLCANO on a small island in southern Japan yesterday erupted in spectacular fashion, spewing out rocks and sending black clouds of ash 9 kilometers into the air.
One person was reported to have suffered minor burns from falling debris after Mount Shindake erupted about 10am, sending dense pyroclastic flows of rock and hot gases seaward, the Japan Meteorological Agency reported.
Authorities told local people to evacuate the area.
The injured man and one other person who was feeling unwell were airlifted to nearby Yakushima island, the Fire and Disaster Management Agency said.
Another 133 people were evacuated on a Coast Guard vessel, and local ferry and fishing boats.
The agency raised the volcano alert level for Kuchinoerabu island, where Shindake is located, to five, the highest on its scale. It also erupted last August for the first time since 1980.
A military helicopter was sent to survey the island and assess the damage.
Nobuaki Hayashi, a local village chief, said about 120 of the island’s 137 residents were gathered at an evacuation facility.
“There was a really loud, ‘dong’ sound of an explosion, and then black smoke rose, darkening the sky,” he told the national broadcaster NHK.
“It smelled of sulfur,” he said.
Hayashi said a few people on the island were still unaccounted for. One person, who lives in an area that is generally off-limits, was to be evacuated by boat as he could not travel safely to the shelter by land.
“The skies here are blue, but smoke is still rising,” he said.
Kuchinoerabu is 80km southwest of Japan’s main southern island of Kyushu. A heavily forested, mountainous island bordered mostly by rocky cliffs, it is a national park supported mainly by tourism and fishing.
About two hours after the eruption, footage from NHK showed the mountain shrouded in light gray ash as the clouds from the eruption cleared.
Kuchinoerabu usually can be reached only by a once-a-day ferry from Yakushima, 12km to the east, which has an airport and a population of 13,000 people.
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