Video of the destruction of Chaiten

Chaiten 2008

Reuters has a short video showing some of the damage inflicted on Chaiten by the volcano of the same name. Looks like the ash, lahars and flooding have wiped out at least a third of the town (according to the voice-over) ... and in a sense, Chaiten (the town) lucked out as the destruction could have been a lot worse.

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UPDATE 2/19/2009 9:45 AM: Well, it seems that my hunch was at least partially right. Reuters (and Paula Narvaez, special envoy to the Chilean president) is calling the eruption as result of "what appeared to be a partial collapse of its cone." So, we might have seen the oversteepening of the dome…
Update 7/2/08: Sounds like the lava flows from Llaima are increasing ... or that there are more of them. The lava flows, as mentioned below, pose a threat to melt the ice on the volcano and produce lahars, or at least flooding. Lots of news this morning about a new eruption at Llaima in Chile. The…
So, there has been a lot of talk about "volcano monitoring" over the last 24 hours, now hasn't there? Now, I'm not going to revisit this discussion, but as an example of why it might be important, there is an article today about the location of the Bataan Nuclear Power Plant in the Philippines (…
Chaiten in Chile erupting in January 2009. Even after over a year of activity, Eruptions readers are still captivated by the volcano. Thanks for sending me your questions about volcanoes and volcanism. I'll try to tackle some hear - but as always, keep the questions coming! Send them to For those…

Excellent website! I think the media's coverage of this event has been atrocious. As far as I know this is a rare type of eruption - i.e. continuous caldera eruption for over a month. Do you know of the last eruption similar to Chaiten? OF course, I suspect Chaiten is not done yet.