Emergency evacuation as Chile volcano spits lava

PUERTO MONTT, Chile (Reuters) - Chile's Chaiten volcanobegan spitting lava on Tuesday following its first eruption inthousands of years, and nearby residents in the southern regionof Patagonia were being evacuated aboard Navy warships.

Chaiten erupted last Friday, sending a towering plume ofash into the sky that has since coated the surrounding area andreached into neighbouring Argentina.

The National Emergency Office said the volcano was spittingbits of molten rock on Tuesday, and that remaining civiliansand troops were being evacuated across a fjord. However, nolava flow had yet been detected down the volcano's sides.

Local television reported loud groaning sounds emanatingfrom the 3,280-foot (1,000-meter) volcano, which had beendormant for thousands of years.

The towering ash cloud was clearly visible from thesouthern town of Puerto Montt, where many evacuees are beingsheltered, a Reuters witness said.

"The situation has changed suddenly," national emergencyofficial Rodrigo Rojas said in an interview.

"Today the volcano is erupting with pyroclastic material ona different scale," he added. "We ... have ordered theimmediate precautionary evacuation of all civilians, militaryand press in Chaiten."

The government said it had ordered the evacuation of a19-mile (30-km) radius around the volcano -- which lies some760 miles (1,220 km) south of the capital, Santiago --including two-dozen people who had refused to leave their homesand animals.

Military personnel, police and journalists were beingferried to join dozens of civilians already aboard warshipswaiting in the fjord off Chaiten, local radio reported.

Around 4,200 people, nearly the whole population of Chaitenwhich is six miles (10 km) from the volcano, have already beenevacuated.

Sparsely populated Patagonia is the southernmost swathe ofLatin America that cuts across Chile and Argentina and is hometo towering snow-capped peaks, some of them volcanoes, glaciersand log cabins, and is a gold mine for dinosaur fossil hunters.

DENSE CLOUD OF ASH

Luis Lara, a government geologist, said he did not expect acatastrophic collapse of the Chaiten volcano, but that a cloudof dense, very hot material could coat the surrounding area.

"This produces a more complicated scenario," Lara said. "Adense cloud of pyroclastic material could move down its slopes,and that causes much more damage (than a spray of lava)."

"The entire volcano will not (collapse), but the eruptivecolumn could, and that is sufficient material to be displaceddown its sides and into areas nearby," he added. "Lava flowwould not reach Chaiten, but hot fragments, ash and gas could."

A second town, Futaleufu, has also been coated with ash andis being evacuated. The area is some distance from Chile'svital mining industry farther north.

Some of Futaleufu's 1,000 or so residents have alreadycrossed into neighbouring Argentina, where some areas have alsobeen showered with thick ash and where flights and schools weresuspended.

Argentina is not evacuating residents from theworst-affected zones, instead advising them to stay indoors.

"It's a horrible situation. Sometimes it goes all dark andit doesn't stop raining ash," said Cecilia Rimoldi, a residentof the southern Argentine tourist town of El Bolson.

The ash is more than 6 inches (15 cm) thick in some placesnear Chaiten, contaminating water supplies and coating houses,vehicles and trees. Thousands of head of cattle are being movedout of the area.

Chile has the world's second most active string ofvolcanoes behind Indonesia. It is home to 2,000 volcanoes, 500of which experts say are potentially active. Around 60 haveerupted over the past 450 years.

(Additional reporting by Monica Vargas, Manuel Farias andJuana Casas in Santiago and Jorge Otaola and Walter Bianchi inBuenos Aires; Writing by Simon Gardner, Editing by SandraMaler)