Ecuadorian villages of 6 provinces covered in Sangay volcano ash
Quito, Sep 20 (efe-epa).- Villages from six Ecuadorian provinces were covered Sunday with ash from the Sangay volcano, located in the Amazon region, the country’s president said.
“We are alert to the ash fall of the Sangay in Guayas, Los Ríos, Santa Elena, Chimborazo, Manabí and Bolívar! We deployed emergency teams to assist citizens and our farmers and ranchers,” Lenín Moreno wrote on his Twitter account.
“#TogetherEcuador we will get out of the emergency due to the ash of Sangay… In this moment teams are deployed in various provinces to take care of agricultural products, livestock and to feed animals,” he later added.
According to the Geophysical Institute of the National Polytechnic School, Sangay volcano in the province of Morona Santiago has registered since Sunday morning a greater number of explosions and more energetic ash emissions than in previous months.
The ash cloud ejected Sunday morning reached a height of between 6 and 10 kilometers above the crater level, said the National Service for Risk and Emergency Management (SNGRE) in a statement.
The SNGRE indicated that after a meeting of the Emergency Operations Committee in the town of Pallatanga, Chimborazo province, it was decided to restrict road speed to 20 kilometers per hour, and the Alausí Operations Committee in Chimborazo suspended open-air commercial activities, as well as those of public and private institutions, on Monday, with the exception of security and garbage collection.
Sangay volcano became active in 2019, but its ash emission intensified at the beginning of June.
At 5,300 meters in altitude, Sangay is one of the 50 volcanoes in Ecuador, of which the majority are located in the so-called Andean “Avenue of the Volcanoes,” although they are also located in the Amazon region and in the Galapagos Islands, in the Pacific Ocean, about 1,000 kilometers from the Ecuadorian coast.
Among the most active volcanoes in Ecuador are Reventador in the Amazon region, Chiles-Cerro Negro, bordering Colombia, and Tungurahua and Cotopaxi in the central Andean region. EFE-EPA
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