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 Chile's Onemi emergency office declared a red alert following the
sudden eruption at around 1800 local time (2100 GMT), which occurred
about 1,000 kilometers (625 miles) south of Santiago, the capital,
near the tourist town of Puerto Varas.
As night fell, about 4,000 people had so far moved out of the area,
an evacuation radius of 20 kilometers has been established and
classes have been canceled in surrounding towns, authorities said.
President Michelle Bachelet is scheduled to travel to the affected
area on Thursday.
There are no reports of deaths, missing persons or injuries,
Interior Minister Rodrigo Penailillo said. He urged residents to
evacuate and warned of possible lahars, a mix of water and rock
fragments that flow down a volcano's slopes and river valleys.
Winds blowing northeast were pushing the column of ash and smoke
toward Argentina.
"In this situation, with the eruption column so high, the main risk
is that it collapses, falls due to gravity because of its own weight
and causes a pyroclastic flow," Gabriel Orozco, a vulcanologist with
Chile's geological and mining service, said on local TV.
A pyroclastic flow is a superheated current of gas and rock that can
destroy nearly everything in its path and travel at speeds upwards
of 200 to 300 kilometers per hour.
LATAM Airlines said it has canceled flights to and from neighboring
Puerto Montt, the area's largest city, due to the presence of
volcanic ash, which can potentially damage aircraft and make flying
dangerous.
Trevor Moffat, who lives in Ensenada, some 10 km from the volcano,
said he and his family fled when the volcano erupted. The last major
eruption of the 2,003-meter-tall Volcano Calbuco was in 1961.
"It sounded like a big tractor trailer passing by the road, rattling
and shaking, guttural rumbling. ... We left everything there,
grabbed my kid, my dog, got in the car with my wife," Moffat said.
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"All the neighbors were outside, a lot of young people crying.
Armageddon type reaction," said Canada-born Moffat, who was driving
to nearby Puerto Varas.
Television pictures showed a spectacular mushroom-shaped column
billowing into the sky with occasional lighting bolts shooting
through. The eruption was seen in towns at least 50 kilometers away.
"There are a lot of people out in the streets, many heading to the
gas stations to fill up on gas," Derek Way, a resident of Puerto
Varas, said.
"A friend told me to fill everything we have with water," Way added.
Chile, on the Pacific "Rim of Fire," has the second largest chain of
volcanoes in the world after Indonesia, including around 500 that
are potentially active.
In March, Volcano Villarrica, also in southern Chile, erupted,
sending a plume of ash and lava high into the sky, but it quickly
subsided.
(Additional reporting by Rosalba O'Brien and Antonio de la Jara;
Editing by James Dalgleish, Christian Plumb and Leslie Adler)
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