Has anyone been affected by the volcano eruption in Guatemala?
Posted By on September 25, 2010
Question by Obama can fix my mess.: Has anyone been affected by the volcano eruption in Guatemala?
The Guatemalan President has declared it a state of emergency, and the national airport(Aurora) has been closed. How about you, do you know anyone in Guatemala? This reminds me of the Volcano eruption in Europe, just on a smaller scale.
Best answer:
Answer by Tix
I do know people that live near the base, but the only thing that they seem to be having a problem with really is clean up. Inches of wet (from the rain), heavy “black sand”, as they keep calling it, everywhere. I live farther north, and there is not one sign of it here. I do not know anyone that was evacuated, nor have I heard how they are doing. Only that “car windshields were smashed by lava”, but I understood they had plenty of time to exit as they knew about this weeks ago. Outside of the mess, it is a beautiful sight!
Addition: (Also to Kristina)… There are conflicting reports of how many were hurt or killed. It still appears to be just the one reporter who got too close, with possible missing people or children, although with language difficulties, I’m not really sure there were actually missing people or if someone blurted that out and the rumor continued and made it to the news. They did know well in advance…
Clean up has been halted due to the extreme rain from Hurricane Agatha. That is affecting all parts of Guatemala, I believe, even in our area. This is a much worse danger than the volcano, which is calming down now. Roads and bridges are being washed out (and if you know Guatemala, which I believe you do, you know this is not a good thing!), houses are flooding, mud slides everywhere. We ourselves are being slightly affected by this and are praying it doesn’t get worse, but the drive home from town tonight was very slick from mud and we receievd a phone call in the nick of time to be careful around the corner before our home that the side of the street is falling away… it is. Kinda scary. Much of Guatemala is without electric, and I heard the airport is shut down for the next 5 days, which will affect some of my friends traveling to the US. We still have our electric, but have heard tomorrow, things may get much worse. I’m up late catching up on my laundry before I have to do it by hand! 
(Thank God for a washer!)
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I actually hiked this volcano in February and was very sad to see such a large explosion from it. It was very active while I was there, erupting every 5-10 minutes, but they were fairly small eruptions. When I was there, we hiked well into the ‘danger zone’ and roasted marshmallows in open lava rivers. There were people that were camping on the mountain. This is a National Park and I’m sure there were campers close by. According to the news, people have died, which is sad. This is also going to affect the tourist industry in that area (Antigua) which is a World Heritage Site and tourism is the main source of income for many Guatemalans. I met many lovely people in that area, but I haven’t stayed in touch with them. I hope none of them were hurt in the eruption.