Chile volcano rumbles, people refuse to evacuate

SANTIAGO, (AFP)

Chilean authorities Friday tried to force 46 people to evacuate a southern town near the Chaiten volcano that has rumbled into activity and threatens to devastate the area with pyroclastic flows.

"The government's not going to allow people to burn themselves up or commit collective suicide," Justice Ministry spokesman Francisco Vidal told reporters.

Chaiten volcano erupted in May 2008 forcing the evacuation of all 4,000 inhabitants of Chaiten town, 10 kilometers (six miles) from the mountain.

Most of the 200 people who since returned to the town have been evacuated, but 46 - including 17 minors - refuse to leave.

Vidal said the government would do all in its power to evacuate the people left in Chaiten, and the National Minors' Service earlier said it was seeking a court order to have all 17 youths in the group removed forcibly and taken to safety. After last year's spectacular eruption - its first in 9,000 years - that spewed ash as far as Buenos Aires, the 1,000-meter (3,280-foot) tall Chaiten volcano, located some 1,300 kilometers (800 miles) south of Santiago, remained largely inactive.On Thursday, however, the mountain rumbled back into action and experts warn that inside its brooding cauldron a large fissure has formed, threatening imminent disaster.The fissure "would indicate a clear weakening of the dome that risks a collapse with any new explosion, launching huge pyroclastic flows toward the bed of the (Blanco) river aimed directly at the heart" of Chaiten, the National Emergency Service said in a statement.

Pyroclastic flows are fast-moving currents of hot gas and rock released by volcanos that travel at hundreds of kilometers per hour obliterating everything in their path. The volcano's new eruptions came only days after the government said it would not rebuild Chaiten in the same location, despite the protests of its inhabitants.