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Anatahan island off limits
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Posted on Apr 07 2005
The Emergency Management Office has declared Anatahan Island temporarily off limits until further notice.
The EMO said, though, that the volcano is not currently dangerous to most aircraft within the CNMI’s airspace. However, conditions may change instantly.
“An aircraft should pass upwind of Anatahan or beyond 30 km downwind from the island and exercise due caution within 10 km of Anatahan,” said the agency.
The EMO is also reminding mariners to avoid the Anatahan area due to continuous volcanic activity.
EMO also received information from the National Weather Service on Guam late Wednesday evening that Rota was already clear of the volcanic ash plume.
Based on a final volcanic eruption advisory, the EMO said it would continue to monitor the ongoing eruption of the Anatahan volcano, in conjunction with National Weather Service and U.S. Geological Survey.
The Anatahan volcano erupted at 3:30am Wednesday morning, spewing ash and gas up to an altitude of 50,000 feet—the highest historical level ever since the volcano’s first recorded eruption in March 2003.
The ash plume resulting from the eruption was so huge that it plunged the Marianas region into darkness.
The U.S. Air Force Weather Agency reported yesterday that the upper level of the ash plume about 50,000 feet blew east to southeast and the lower level ash plume about 15,000 ft blew toward the southwest. The plume extended more than 250 nautical miles and reached Guam yesterday.
Since then, the EMO said that seismicity at the volcano has been very low, almost near background level.
Anatahan’s volcano first erupted after centuries of dormancy on May 10, 2003, with ash plume rising to an altitude of over 30,000 feet that covered over 1-million-square kilometers of airspace above the Pacific Ocean. It deposited about 10-million cubic meters of material over Anatahan Island and the sea.
That eruption stopped by mid-June 2003. The second batch of volcanic eruptions happened from April to June 2004. The third historical eruption began on Jan. 6, 2005 and continues today.
