Mexico Residents Prepare for Evacuation as Popocatepetl Volcano Spews Smoke and Ash Transcript

Millions of people in Mexico have been told to get ready to leave because of a volcano there, a dangerous and active volcano is in fact getting more and more active. It’s about 45 miles southeast of Mexico City. That’s the biggest city of North America. So 45 miles southeast, not that far. Popocatepetl, you can see it there on the map. It’s doing what active volcanoes do. It’s throwing ash and smoke into the air. It’s hazy, it’s gray. The air quality’s bad. Schools in some places have shut down. Some local parks have closed. The airport in Mexico City was shut down temporarily. You’ve seen some flights delayed too. As you can see, sort of what this thing looks like. Steve Patterson is covering all this for us. This is a volcano. It is not like it is a shocker that it is active. You’ve reported that people in the area have heard rumblings for a long time. This is maybe next level and the unknown piece of it is what’s scary.

It’s certainly next level. You’re talking about plumes that are 4.5 miles high. Imagine that, over Mexico City. As you said, 45 miles is like the distance from here to Anaheim. If you can imagine that, it’s right in the neighborhood. There’s 25 million people in a 60 mile radius. That’s a lot of people. The concentration of people when you have that amount of smoke, not to mention it’s erupting. So you have plumes of ash, you have explosions happening. All of that is very near the proximity. That’s what’s so dangerous and the fact that, yeah, we don’t know what’s going to happen next necessarily.

Gut check though, right? If and when this does explode in a more significant way, that’s a dramatic picture. But that’s not like what’s going to hit people’s house.

No.

It’s not like in a flash, like in a cartoon. You’ve got like lava cover in your house. It is a disaster, but it is a slow motion disaster.

It’s not as if Mexico City turns into Pompey overnight. Right? And there are people on the ground to make sure that doesn’t happen. First of all, that there are evacuation orders in place if they need it. We’re at a yellow code right now. If it moves to a red, which would be the next phase, that would be mass evacuations. So the government is thinking about that. But more importantly, this is mostly about what happens to the atmosphere. It’s the pictures that you showed that were gray and smoky and people are breathing this toxic air in that is the most dangerous thing that is happening right now. It doesn’t mean that there couldn’t be a massive explosion or eruption that happens in the course of this, but this thing has been erupting really continuously since 1994.

So then is the risk being sort of over told here, or is this appropriate based on so much of the uncertainty?

I would say it’s appropriate because when you have this many eruptions happening all at once, all in the same week, there are hundreds more than there usually are. That is cause for concern. And I think people need to be a high alert. People need to be vigilant. But I think also people need to not be so freaking out. The people that live under this thing, they are acting as if it’s business as usual. Aside from the fact that school’s canceled, there are few delays at the airport, everything else normal life has resumed. It is until it hits the fan that people need to be concerned.

Of course. That is for sure. Steve Patterson, thank you so much. Appreciate it.