Interns and Vocanoes

Tomorrow our interns return from Guadalajara after being there about 12 days, participating in a youth retreat, being fed 5 times a day at a small village, then teaching English and involved in the life of a local church there, with pastor and friend Fernando Amezcua and is wife Luz María. This next week will be full of visiting areas in and around Mexico City. We're doing our orientation near the end of the internship time this year. Camino Global internship coordinator Karin Benningfield will also be joining us, although with Bill and Bel Roberts.

Check out this link from National Geographic on our favorite active volcano. The picture at the end of this post is from this web article. Popocatepetl continues to spout off, prompting officials to raise the alert level to Yellow-3, just one small step away from an alert level or Red, which would mean evacuation for the nearest communities.

Would a large scale eruption affect us? It's about 34 miles driving from our house to Paso de Cortez, or the pass right between the volcanoes. How much would that be "the way the crow flies?" Obviously quite a bit less, probably under 30 miles. Would lava ever reach us? No. Would the toxic gas that rolls down the sides of a volcano killing everything in its path reach us? No. The only danger we could possibly experience 30 miles out would be in the case of a catastrophic event where a good portion of the cone of the volcano would explode and send rocks flying into the air. Nevertheless, the figure I've most read is a danger area 20 miles radius out from the cone.

Ash, although posing no life-threatening danger, can be extremely irritating to ones respiratory system, especially in babies and older individuals. It can travel literally hundreds of miles, and is a real hassle, coating and scratching everything.

Quote of the Day: The first responsibility of a leader is to define reality. —Max De Pree