Fleeing the Chaiten Volcano in Chile

Residents of Futaleufu, Chile, wear masks protecting themselves from ash spewing from the nearby Chaitén Volcano. Photo: AP

Nicolas La Penna first started feeling the earthquakes Thursday around the southern Chilean town of Chaitén, where he lives with his wife and two children. Ash was spewing from a nearby volcano, although he wasn't sure exactly where it was coming from.

That night, lightning flashed in the ash, due to the electric static created by the intense amounts of material coming out of the volcano. Between the ash, the lightning, the sulfuric smell and the earthquakes, La Penna decided it was time to leave.

The Chaitén Volcano was erupting, only six miles from town. If it blew, there'd be no time to respond, and if lava from the volcano headed toward town, it'd be there within 20 minutes.

La Penna got his family aboard a ferry the next morning and then went back to close up his house and the tour agency he runs. This native of Vermont has lived in Chaitén for over a decade, and I met him in March 2006 when I was there doing a story on a nearby park founded by U.S. environmentalist Douglas Tompkins.

By chance, a larger ship full of cargo and tourists was passing by as the town of 7,000 people was being evacuated. The authorities ordered the ship to stop at Chaitén to help evacuate, and it transported La Penna, his family and hundreds of others out of the area Friday afternoon. As they left, La Penna looked back in awe at the column of ash stretching 12 miles into the sky right over his little town.

Today, the volcano has let loose a second, larger series of eruptions, and the Chilean government has ordered a total, mandatory evacuation of Chaitén. Local media report the ash has drifted all the way across the Andes and South America to the Atlantic coast of Argentina, with the possibility of reaching the Argentine capital of Buenos Aires thousands of miles away.

The chance of a massive eruption is growing, and La Penna says he and his neighbors could lose everything. The last eruption there 9,000 years ago created a crater about two miles across. La Penna and his family are waiting out the eruption with friends and relatives hundreds of miles away in the town of Concepción. And that, he said, is what's most important. He and his family are safe.