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Did you hear that?

Volcán Telica clearly had no intention of taking the weekend off so yesterday morning two of our team, Andrew Longley (a geologist) and Rolando Castillo, once again set out with people from INETER, the Nicaraguan geological survey, to monitor fumaroles and springs in the communities closest to the crater.  This time they visited Agua Fría on the north side of the crater.  They located the fumaroles and tested the water quality at the spring where work on our project to improve the water supply has been temporarily suspended.  On this side of the crater no significant change was observed.

At around 3pm, as Andrew, Rolando and Eveling Espinoza, a geologist from INETER, were heading back down the hillside, they heard a loud explosion and turned round to see a column of ash rising high into the sky.  The cloud made a spectacular and exciting sight for the geologists close by.  Andrew gave this eye witness account of what happened:

“We were coming down the mountain side as storm clouds had started to gather in front of us.  We listened to the rumbles of thunder wondering if we were going to make it back down before the heavens opened.  Then all of sudden there was a loud bang behind us.  Rolando looked at me and said “That wasn’t thunder, was it?”  We turned around to see an enormous column of ash which had already risen from the crater.  The crater itself was just out of view behind a hill, so we ran uphill to get a better view, pulling the camera and video camera out of our bags as we ran.  The sight was spectacular as the volcano spewed out a dark grey cloud of ash.  This was different from the previous explosions we had witnessed close to on the Wednesday evening as the ash cloud was darker and appeared to fall more heavily than before.  As the column of ash surged upwards it blotted out the sun as the wind brought it over our heads.  We could see the ash raining down on the western part of Agua Fría where some families had been reluctant to leave.  Our immediate concern was for those who still remained in this area but for me, as a geologist, it was also an awesome sight which I felt privileged to observe.”

For the families living in Agua Fría though, the noise was certainly alarming.  Having felt relatively safe in the days before this, the families closest to the crater were suddenly very keen to get away.  Vehicles from the army and police went up to help evacuate all those who wanted to leave as the ash fell.  Several inches fell in just an hour or so.  Members of the Nuevas Esperanzas team helped to organise the evacuation and went out to collect ash samples from the latest fall so that they too could be analysed.  It seems that the ash and sand falling now may indicate a magmatic eruption. 

No-one can say for how long Volcán Telica will continue to erupt or for how long the families from Agua Fría and El Ojochal may need to be away from their homes.  Until things quieten down and our work on water, beekeeping and reforestation projects in these communities can continue, we will continue to offer logistical and technical support, local knowledge and practical help wherever we can be of most use.  And for a little while at least we have all been reminded why Nicaragua is known as ‘The Land of Lakes and Volcanoes’.

Click here to watch a film of the ash cloud on YouTube.

22/05/11