Geologists say the eruption has diminished from its peak in June, when the plume rose 6 miles and stretched across the continent. Chile has allowed about 3,500 evacuees, most of them small farmers living below the volcano, to return home.
But a NASA satellite photo this week showed the volcano still spewing ash nearly 2 miles high in a column that stretched for 50 miles over Argentina, adding to the gritty layers of snow and ash.
Experts have estimated that in Villa La Angostura alone, 5 million cubic meters of volcanic sand must be removed, Fioranelli said. That’s roughly equivalent to covering the entire island of Manhattan in 2 inches of the grit. Hundreds of people who started with snow shovels now use heavy equipment to dump the mess into nearby quarries.
