Residents Calm at Edge of Volcano

Angel Calla shrugs as he considers an eruption of Misti, the volcano with a tuft of snow on top that overlooks his convenience store.

“It will take time for the lava to get here. We’d have time to escape,” he said.

Calla, 52, was one of the first people to settle the ramshackle San Luis shantytown 25 years ago on the arid foothills below Misti’s 19,111-foot summit.

“I’m not scared,” he added. “If I die, I die.”

A French scientist and some Arequipa officials, however, are more concerned. They warn that Misti, an enduring symbol of Peru’s second largest city, is due for a major eruption that could have disastrous consequences for some of the 1 million people who live below it.

They say that even a moderate eruption from Misti, which exploded at least twice before the arrival of Spanish conquistadors and released smoke and gases more than a dozen times since, could melt ice and send mudslides down its slopes.

Jean-Claude Thouret, a volcanologist at Blaise-Pascal University in France, has studied Misti since 1994. In December 2001, he published a study in the Geological Society of America Bulletin warning that a moderate eruption would mean “considerable hazards” for Arequipa.

People have lived in the Arequipa area since ancient times. Members of the Inca empire, which worshipped snowcapped mountains and volcanoes, left offerings at Misti. including human sacrifices.

Modern Arequipa has treated the volcano with less reverence. For decades, authorities have allowed the city to expand toward the volcano as landless peasants from the rural Andes flocked to Arequipa in search of work.

Hundreds of thousands of people settling in the path of inevitable disaster have gone largely unnoticed in Peru, where ignoring safety precautions is the norm. Peruvians have become accustomed to tragedies like the deaths of almost 300 people just over a year ago in a blaze at an unregulated fireworks market in Lima, the capital.

Psychologist Dora Herrera of the University of Lima said the disregard for safety comes from a lack of rules, lax enforcement and the ingrained practice of paying bribes to avoid compliance.

“We have become accustomed to not respecting rules and regulations that in many cases are necessary,” she said.

San Luis, where Calla lives, is one of dozens of poor neighborhoods that have sprouted on Arequipa’s eastern flank near Misti’s base. Crude wooden crosses mark a cemetery on a nearby hill as minivans whisk residents downtown.

Misti provides a picturesque backdrop to Arequipa’s central plaza, which is fronted by a white-stone cathedral 10 miles from the volcano’s crater. Travel agencies lining the plaza offer two-day treks to the volcano’s summit.

Disaster management officials in Arequipa credit the work of Thouret and other scientists with creating awareness of the potential danger stewing within Misti.

In their study, Thouret and his team documented a major eruption around 2050 B.C. that spewed pumice as far as 15 miles away. Another smaller eruption around A.D. 1440, in Inca times, dispersed an inch or so of ash across the area.

Since the arrival of the Spanish conquistadors in the early 16th century, historians have chronicled what may have been four more minor eruptions, the volcanologists found.

Thouret and his team also identified nine reports of smoke or gases rising from Misti -- the most recent in 1948.

As recently as June 2001, an earthquake in Arequipa caused smoke and gas activity to increase briefly at the volcano’s crater, according to a report from the U.S. Geological Society of America.

“The possible impact of Misti on Arequipa is as worrisome as that of Vesuvius” near Naples, Italy, Thouret said.

Vesuvius erupted in A.D. 79 and buried the Roman town of Pompeii under ash, freezing it in time. Archeologists are still excavating the ruins, one of Italy’s top tourist attractions.

According to Thouret’s study of the geological evidence, at least 220,000 people in Arequipa are at risk from potential flows of rock and volcanic debris, mudslides and flash floods.

“Misti’s eruption is probable, but we cannot forecast the magnitude of the future eruption unless we detect changes in the volcano’s behavior a few weeks or a few months in advance,” Thouret said.

Mario Paredes, a Civil Defense Institute engineer, said an eruption could push an infernal wave of 800-degree air down the volcano’s slopes, incinerating anything in its path.

Paredes said Civil Defense has used Thouret’s studies to design a “risk map” of the city and corresponding zoning regulations.

He said that the costs of even a practice drill for evacuating more than 200,000 people are tremendous, especially because officials must plan simulations for more frequent earthquakes and seasonal flooding.

Francisco Ampuero, Civil Defense’s liaison in the Arequipa municipality, said planning for disasters like a volcanic eruption takes a backseat in cash-strapped governments in Peru.

In the past, mayors have hastily granted land titles to poor squatters near Misti to head off protests and other social unrest, Ampuero said. Economic interests like real estate development also come into play.

“There is a city planning department, but no one pays any attention to it,” Ampuero said. “It happens throughout Peru. People just don’t give priority to prevention.”

In neighboring Colombia, scientists also warned people of the dangers of living near the snowcapped Nevado del Ruiz volcano prior to its 1985 eruption, the most deadly in modern South American history.

The eruption unleashed mudslides that killed at least 23,000 people living in towns along rivers running away from Nevado del Ruiz’s peak.

Jose Chavez, an archeologist at Arequipa’s Catholic University who has written a book about Misti’s eruptions, has lobbied city officials to recognize the potential dangers of Misti.

Chavez discovered two Inca tombs with six bodies at Misti’s crater, sacrifices to the apus, or mountain gods, that were part of the Incas’ disaster prevention.

“Of course, these days, we’re not going to make human sacrifices,” Chavez said. “These are different times.”