Fuego Volcano, which is only 50 kilometers from the capital of Guatemala and is one of the most active in the country, threw a column of ash at a height of 10 km. The eruption that began on June 3 was very powerful. First, no one could imagine that it would be like this.
Residents of the villages located near the volcano were advised to use masks and shelter the property. And then it was already late, lava and ash spread catastrophically fast. In this eruption, the pyroclastic flows that have a temperature of 100 to 800 degrees and with great speed (up to 700 km / h) overcome even the black matter are overcome even by water obstacles. At one time they killed the inhabitants of Pompeii and Herculaneum. In the first days of the eruption, none of the residents of the country could even say where his relatives and friends were, and therefore it was impossible to determine the number of dead and missing persons. Thousands of homes in the towns of El Rodeo, San Miguel Los Lotes, La Libertad and La Reina were buried under a layer of ash and lava. Thousands of people were evacuated from dangerous places. Now it is already clear that you can not live there anymore. For people who have lost their homes, housing will be built in safe places.
On July 6, it is known about 120 dead and 332 missing persons. Often dead is extremely difficult to identify. And there is no one to help in this - people perished by families, whole villages. Until now, dozens of Guatemalans are in hospitals with burns. And in the days of the eruption of Fuego, there were hundreds. A total of about 2 million people were directly or indirectly affected by the eruption of the volcano. The volcanic eruption zone was declared a mass grave. On June 17, the search and rescue operation was completed.
This eruption became the most terrible in terms of the number of victims in recent centuries. More victims were only in 1717, when the simultaneous eruption of volcanoes Fuego and Agua destroyed the whole city. The death toll could not even be counted at that time.
Simultaneously with the eruption of Fuego, the volcano Kilauea erupted in Hawaii. There more than 3 thousand people were evacuated from the danger zone. Hundreds of houses destroyed.