A volcano has awakened in Kamchatka • Public Post • RIMA

A volcano has awakened in Kamchatka

Photo: ITAR-TASS

Lava flows erupting from the Plosky Tolbachik volcano in Kamchatka reached the forest and set it on fire, the press service of the Kamchatka Volcanoes Nature Park reported . The eruption began on November 27.

Photo: ITAR-TASS

According to the inspector of the natural park, Alexander Bichenko, who returned from the scene on December 4, two streams formed near the crater: the first, about 1 km wide and 10 km long, went along the Vodopadny stream into the forest. “It’s very good that it’s winter now and the snow is holding back the fire, because in the summer it could have catastrophic consequences,” the inspector said. The second flow, which passed along the Kleshnya crater at the end of last week, destroyed the buildings of the Leningradskaya scientific base and the Tolbachinskaya tourist base. Ashfalls occurred in the villages of Mayskoye and Kozyrevsk, located near Plosky Tolbachik, Ust-Kamchatka region. No people were hurt.

Photo: ITAR-TASS

Eyewitnesses have already dubbed the volcanic eruption the “new Tolbachik fissure eruption,” which occurred in 1975-1976, and as a result of which all living things died tens of kilometers from the volcano. The press service of the natural park assumes that the development of mass tourism in this area is over.

Photo: ITAR-TASS

“According to the inspectors of the Klyuchevsky Natural Park, Egor Afanasyev and Alexander Bichenko, the lava flow will most likely block the road leading from the village of Kozyrevsk, located 40 kilometers from the giant, to the foot of Plosky Tolbachik,” the press service reports. “But the most important obstacle for tourists will be the complete dehydration of the area. If after the 1975-1976 eruption a small spring still made its way through the layers of slag and volcanic ash, now it is securely buried under a ten-meter layer of basalt.” An operational group of the Main Directorate of the Ministry of Emergency Situations for the Kamchatka Territory, as well as representatives of the Institute of Volcanology and Seismology of the Far Eastern Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, are working in the area of the cataclysm. Experts predict that the eruption will be long-term and will last more than 30 days.