Chile Forum

I've spent most of the summer near Futaleufu. Last Thursday, the volcano erupted again and we experienced about an hour of total darkness requiring flashlights at high noon. We also got about 1mm of ash dusted on everything.

Having said that, I am very optimistic about the situation in Futa. Most of the summer was beautiful! We had clear air and sunshine nearly every day. We had a few days when the wind kicked up the ash but overall it was nearly as beautiful as ever. After this latest dusting, the city sent two water trucks around and guys with hoses sprayed off every concrete street in the whole town! They even sprayed off our car with a big grin. They had guys with power sprayers cleaning the ash off the bushes in the plaza. Pretty amazing how fast that had it ship-shape again. So out of the whole summer,we had two days when we needed to wear masks. Not to bad.

The tragedy in Chaiten has actually been good for Futa because the many services, previously available in chaiten, such as a Notary are now available in futa.

The bad news is that they expect this volcano to erupt for a number of years--perhaps 10 years. The dome is unstable and a reliable source told me that a crack has opened up in the valley between the dome and Chaiten that is spewing steam and a little lava.

We visited Chaiten a week before this latest eruption. We have friends there whose house has 5 feet of ash in all the rooms. Its very sad. The government has officially decided not to rebuild the town. The rumor from good sources is that the government will buy all the houses (mandetory) and bulldoze the whole town to prevent lawlessness. There has been an ongoing problem with looting. There is no judge in the region so if they catch someone, they can't lock them up without a judge. So they are getting turned loose again.

Its obvious that they don't have much time to build a new ferry dock. The ash has created a plane that extends for maybe 1/2 mile out into the bay. There is a sad house sitting in the middle that is nearly in tact. It washed out to sea with the flood. The ash is rapidly encroaching on the Ferry terminal. It is rumored that they have nearly completed a new ferry dock near Santa Barbara. However, this latest eruption has raised the question of whether Santa Barbara is far enough away from the volcano should there be a catastrophic eruption. It is only 6km or so up the Caraterra from Chaiten.

There is a dear lady in Santa Barbara that now runs a hospidaje called Patitos. She used to own a grocery store and other stores in Chaiten but nearly lost everything except her home in Santa Barbara. Its a huge two story house with a neat view of the bay.

Another dome collapse at Chaiten.....photos are unreal

http://volcanism.wordpress.com/2009/02/ ... -collapse/

http://volcanism.wordpress.com/2009/02/ ... uary-2009/

Those pictures are amazing.

In the last two hours we've have two earthquakes. These were the same jolting type of earthquake we felt before the very first eruption. No sign of an eruption on the webcam.

kel

I am doing research for a novel and planning a trip to Chile April 20 - 29 specifically to visit Chaiten Volcano. I have located a guide, Nicolas La Penna, of Chaitur Excursions http://www.chaitur.com/index_en.htm who will arrange lodging for me in Chaiten and take me and my traveling companion to within 2 km of the lava dome. I understand Chaiten has no city services, and am fine with that. I will be staying in Chaiten approximately four days.

Any tips, warnings, and advice would be very much appreciated.

Karen

<LINK REMOVED BY ADMIN>

First, welcome to the forum.

Second, normally I simply ban anyone that spams the forum like that in their first post. In this case you got lucky because Nicolas is a friend of mine. So, watch the links until you have 10 posts.

Thanks for the welcome! It's good to know you know Nicolas - we've exchanged a couple of emails, and he seems very helpful, straightforward and honest - I'm really looking forward to working with him, and of course, I'm incredibly excited about the trip.

I've been reading everything I can find about Chaiten, but until I found this forum, all of the information was dated to before the volcano erupted. So glad I found you all. I don't have anything to offer in return, but hopefully I can contribute something useful after my trip.

Or even photographs and words while there.

Will do!

Hi,
if you want some pictures from Chaiten after eruption I will be glad to put it in my Patagonia site.
I'm not posting here anymore because as far as I know, its a forum only for people in Chile and this is not my case.
Anyway, be my guest visiting http://www.photopatagonia.com , lots of Chile and Argentina images.

Marcelo

Dear All,

I am a freelance journalist based in Buenos Aires and will be heading to Chaiten in a few weeks to prepare a news report for AP Television on the moving of Chaiten to Santa Barbara.

Primarily I plan to spend a day or two in Chaiten to film what is possible. I am at the initial stages of my preparation but would really appreciate if anyone here can advise me of any members of the community of Chaiten that are against this moving of their town.

Any other pointers you might have also would of course be gratefully received.

Hope you don't mind the calls for advice and thanks for the forum.

regards,

Paul