About 500 residents evacuated voluntarily from the slopes of Guatemala’s Volcano of Fire Tuesday as red-hot rock and ash flowed down the slopes toward an area devastated by a deadly 2018 eruption.
The National Institute of Seismology, Vulcanology, Meteorology, and Hydrology said in a statement that around 3 a.m. local time on Tuesday the volcano’s activity began to diminish.
Farmers like 48-year-old Armando Chuy hope it rains soon, so it cleans the grass and his animals can eat.
Guatemala’s disaster agency said shelters had been opened for the evacuees in the nearby town of Escuintla.
At one of those, a gym converted to a shelter in the community of Santa Lucia Cotzumalguapa, residents of surrounding communities rested on cots waiting to hear it was safe to return to their homes.
75-year-old Catarino Misa Roquel said it’s better to wait until it’s safe.
He remembers when the volcano erupted years ago.
“Suddenly the ravine fills up, it fills up with lava and that’s trouble,” he recalls.
The 12,300-foot (3,763-meter) high Volcano of Fire is one of the most active in Central America and an eruption in 2018 killed 194 people and left another 234 missing.
The biggest danger from the volcano are lahars, a mixture of ash, rock, mud, and debris, that can bury entire towns.
