More than 30 people are feared to have died after a volcano erupted in
The victims were trapped overnight after Mount Ontake erupted without warning on Saturday. “We have confirmed that more than 30 individuals have been found dead near the summit,” a Nagano prefecture police spokesman said.
The 3,067m-high mountain, a popular location for walkers and climbers, erupted shortly before noon Saturday. About 250 people were trapped on the slopes at the beginning, but most made their way down by Saturday night.
More than 500 Japanese military and police used helicopters to search for survivors on Sunday. Video showed huge grey clouds boiling towards climbers at the peak and people struggling to rush down as blackness enveloped them.
“All of a sudden ash piled up so quickly that we couldn’t even open the door,” Shuichi Mukai, who worked in a mountain hut just below the peak. The hut quickly filled with hikers seeking shelter. “We were really packed in here, maybe 150 people. There were some children crying, but most people were calm. We waited there in hard hats until they told us it was safe to come down.”
The mountain, some 200km west of Tokyo, is a popular site to view autumn foliage, currently at its best.
Flights at Tokyo’s Haneda airport suffered delays as planes changed routes to avoid the peak, which stands across Nagano and Gifu prefectures, but were mostly back to normal by Sunday, an airport spokeswoman said.
An official at the volcano division of the Japan Meteorological Agency said that, while there had been a rising number of small earthquakes detected at Ontake since 10 September, the eruption could not have been predicted easily.
“There were no other signs of an impending eruption, such as earth movements or changes on the mountain’s surface,” the official told Reuters. “With only the earthquakes, we couldn’t really say this would lead to an eruption.”
本时文内容由奇速英语国际教育研究院原创编写，禁止复制和任何商业用途，版权所有，侵权必究！
13980503458
13980503458
admin@qisuen.cn
