Chilean Volcano Deserves Headlines

The eruption as it was seen FROM SPACE!

While much of the top stories as of late have focused on political scandal involving a politician with a humorous last name and a homicide trial in Florida involving a mother being accused of murdering her child, I find myself enamored by other stories. As you might guess, they involve natural disasters.

There is a volcano that is erupting right now in Chile. Of course, is this a major surprise? Not really. The country is littered with active volcanoes (five less than a 1000 km from each other), all of which are a part of the scariest ring since the one dropped in the fires of Mordor, The Pacific Ring of Fire.

The Puyehue volcano is taking advantage of its turn to erupt in this region, though some aren’t even sure if it’s Puyehue or Cordon Caulle erupting (that’s how many active volcanic features there are in the region). The volcano has shot enough ash in the atmosphere that it is disrupting air travel on the other side of the world in Australia!


The ash mean downed airplanes, but it also means
Aussies get a sweet view of a lunar eclipse

A country 11,078 km east of Australia, South Africa has even seen some of the ash. Also, it’s possible that the ash could continue to spew from the volcano for the next few days (it’s already been erupting for 11 days!).

This is a disaster that ranks high on the scale of one we’ve seen in the past few years, between the devastation caused by the ash falling in the region and sheer scale of the eruption’s effects around the world. However, much of the US News is focused on events like political scandal and murder which occur daily.

I’ll be the first one to argue that natural disasters are imminent and more common than people think, but there are disasters that transcend your typical flood along a major river or tornado in the Midwest. This is definitely one of them.