Cleveland Volcano spews ash plume

ANCHORAGE – Geologists are on alert after the Cleveland Volcano spewed an ash plume up to 20,000 feet.

The Alaska Volcano Observatory reports that the volcano on Alaska’s Aleutians Islands erupted late Friday, prompting the observatory to raise the mountain’s threat level to code orange.

Cleveland is about 940 miles southwest of Anchorage, on a remote and uninhabited island.

The observatory says the 5,676-foot volcano’s last significant eruption began in February 2001 and eventually produced a lava flow that reached the ocean.

It says ash emissions from Cleveland were most recently seen in June.

http://juneauempire.com/stories/100409/reg_500793645.shtml

Eastern Congo volcanoes show eruption warning signs

KINSHASA, March 30 (Reuters) – Two volcanoes may erupt in heavily populated eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, where years of fighting have already forced 1 million people from their homes, scientists and aid agencies said.

Scientists in Goma, capital of the border province of North Kivu, have in recent weeks registered high levels of seismic activity, considered an early warning sign of an impending eruption, around the Nyiragongo and Nyamulagira volcanoes.

“There is heavy activity around Nyiragongo, but it’s more centred on Nyamulagira, around 13 km (8 miles) away,” Dieudonne Wafula, lead scientist at the Volcanological Observatory of Goma, told Reuters on Monday.

Nyiragongo, which lies just outside Goma, erupted in 2002, sending a river of lava through the city, destroying thousands of homes and killing dozens of people.

“Red Cross volunteers are on alert to help the population, which still has memories of the (2002) eruption … which displaced around 400,000 people,” Zebe Kitabingo, head of the local chapter of the Congolese Red Cross, said in a statement.

Eastern Congo is still struggling to end more than a decade of lingering fighting between government soldiers, local Mai Mai militias, and rebels that has rumbled on despite the official end of a 1998-2003 war.

The conflict and the humanitarian catastrophe it sparked have killed about 5.4 million people over the past decade.

The fighting has displaced around 1 million people in North Kivu since late 2006, and tens of thousands of internal refugees have flocked to the relative security of camps on the outskirts of Goma, a city home to more than 600,000 people.

Despite the city’s close proximity to the two volcanoes, Wafula said Goma itself did not appear to be at risk, as the level of lava in the Nyiragongo crater is relatively low.

“It’s less worrying. The higher the lava level, the higher the probability of a serious eruption. The risk is greater for the villages west of the Nyamulagira volcano,” he said.

Aside from the immediate threat of lava flows, Wafula warned against the dangers of airborne ash, which can contaminate drinking water, poison livestock, and disrupt air traffic.

http://uk.reuters.com/article/homepageCrisis/idUKLU424228._CH_.2420

Anchorage Airport closed as volcanic ash falls

The Anchorage, Alaska, airport remained closed Sunday morning after an erupting volcano shot ash some 45,000 feet in the air on Saturday, officials said.

Ash from Mount Redoubt fell around the city — Alaska’s largest — resulting in the closure of Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport, the Federal Aviation Administration said.

Only a trace amount of the ash reached the airport grounds, airport spokesman Jeremy Lindseth said, but it was enough to affect operations. He said he did not know how many flights were canceled or rerouted as a result of the ash, and did not know when the airport would reopen.

The eruption occurred at about 1:30 p.m. (5:30 p.m. ET) Saturday, the U.S. Geological Survey told CNN. The volcano erupted four times on Friday, at times shooting ash 51,000 feet into the air.

The eruptions are the latest in a series that began March 22.

The Alaska Volcano Observatory has set the alert level at its highest possible designation — red — indicating that an eruption is under way or imminent and that the eruption will produce a “significant emission of volcanic ash into the atmosphere.”

Friday’s volcano activity prompted Alaska Airlines to limit flights to and from Anchorage, according to the airline’s Web site. The airline canceled all its Thursday flights to and from Anchorage after an eruption earlier in the day sent an ash cloud 65,000 feet high.

http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/03/29/alaska.volcano/index.html