Kindgo
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Weekend News Today
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Lead: Faith
Source: ABC News/
Sat Aug 10,2002 -- A rumbling volcano on Papua New Guinea's New Britain island spewed ash and smoke into the air on Saturday and small pools of lava have begun to form, a vulcanologist monitoring the eruption said. The Mount Pago volcano, about 31 miles south of the town of Kimbe, began erupting on Monday, covering surrounding fields and palm oil plantations in toxic, acidic ash, said vulcanologist Steve Saunders in the island capital Rabaul. Police estimated between 6,000 and 8,000 people had been evacuated from surrounding villages and said no one has been injured. "Lava is pooling around some small vents, (but) it's not running lava," he added.
Villagers around Mount Pago on Friday gathered personal belongings and lined the ash-covered roads to await evacuation under an eerily gray sky. Volcano Mount Pago, a relatively unstudied volcano, has not acted up since it last spewed smoke and ash in 1933 and erupted in the 1920s, experts say. Vulcanologists said Pago was a young volcano -- its cone was probably only about 350 years old -- but it was part of a much larger volcanic complex that may have had a serious eruption 1,500 years ago. Rabaul, on the northern tip of New Britain, was devastated in 1994 when 2 volcanoes on either side of the town erupted, forcing the evacuation of 30,000 residents.
Posts: 4320 | From: Sunny Florida | Registered: Jun 2002
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