Java's Mount Kelud eruption: 10KM defensive evacuation

Several airports have reopened on the Indonesian island of Java after being forced to close following the eruption of volcano Mount Kelud.

Correspondents say air quality has improved across Java, but cities and villages are still covered in a layer of dust and ash.

Tens of thousands remain in shelters, facing medicine and blanket shortages.

Mount Kelud, in Java's east, spewed ash and debris over a large area on Friday, killing three people.

The volcano had been rumbling for several weeks before it erupted.

Authorities said they were not expecting another major tremor, because the patterns showed volcanoes tended to quieten down after a large eruption.

Stream of ash
The transport ministry said airports in Malang, Cilacap and Semarang reopened on Saturday.

"We are now evaluating the status of other airports," spokesman Bambang Ervan said.

The airports shut down because of low visibility. There were also fears that debris could damage aircraft engines.

Some 75,000 people are estimated to have sought refuge in temporary shelters.

Many are unable to return to their homes because authorities have kept a 10km exclusion zone in place around the volcano.

Local reporters say the volcano alert remains at the highest level because officials do not want to take any chances.

Officials raised an alert on Thursday about an hour before the volcano erupted.

They urged people living in 36 villages within 10km of the volcano to evacuate.

Officials said two people died when their homes caved in under the weight of gravel and ash.

A 70-year-old man was killed when a wall collapsed while he was waiting to be evacuated.

Some of the evacuees tried to return to their houses on Friday morning to gather their possessions, but were forced to turn back by the stream of volcanic ash and rocks from the volcano.

The volcano last erupted in 1990, killing dozens of people. A powerful eruption in 1919 killed around 5,000 people.

Indonesia lies on the Ring of Fire, a series of geological fault-lines, prone to frequent earthquakes and volcanic eruptions.

There are about 130 active volcanoes in Indonesia.

Earlier this month, Mount Sinabung on the island of Sumatra erupted, killing at least 14 people and making many homeless.

Indonesian volcanic eruption: Mount Sinabung forces evacuations

Indonesians look at the volcanic ash spewing up into the air from Mount Sinabung as it erupts in Karo, North Sumatra, on January 1, 2014

An Indonesian volcano that has erupted relentlessly for months shot volcanic ash into the air 30 times on Saturday, forcing further evacuations with more than 20,000 people now displaced, an official said.

Mount Sinabung on the western island of Sumatra sent rivers of lava flowing through an evacuation zone and columns of volcanic cloud up as high as 4,000 metres (13,000 feet), National Disaster Mitigation Agency (BNPB) spokesman Sutopo Purwo Nugroho said.

"Hot lava spewed from the volcano some 60 times, reaching up to five kilometres (three miles) southeast of the crater. This outpour is the biggest we've seen in all the recent eruptions," Nugroho said.

Authorities had already told residents in a five-kilometre radius of the volcano to evacuate, and Nugroho said an expanded evacuation zone may be considered.

The number of people who have now fled the rumbling volcano since it began erupting in September last year has risen to 20,331, Nugroho said.

Mount Sinabung is one of dozens of active volcanoes in Indonesia that straddle major tectonic fault lines, known as the Ring of Fire.

It had been quiet for around 400 years until it rumbled back to life in 2010, and again in September last year.

In August, five people were killed and hundreds evacuated when a volcano on a tiny island in East Nusa Tenggara province erupted.

Chaparrastique volcano eruption, El Salvador: Villages evacuated

An area around the Chaparrastique volcano in El Salvador has been evacuated after the peak shot a cloud of gas and ash about three miles into the air.

Civil defence director Jorge Melendez said a yellow alert had been issued and investigators had been sent to the area to look for signs of fresh lava, but that none has been detected so far.

"We have implemented emergency measures to evacuate villages located within 3 km (1.8 miles) of the volcano," He said.

Shelters have been set up for the evacuees, but Mr Melendez said some inhabitants had been reluctant to leave their homes. "One has to leave for one's own safety," he said.

Assistant health minister Eduardo Espinoza said two people had been treated at hospitals for respiratory problems apparently linked to the eruption yesterday, "but we do not have any serious cases to report".

He said: "We are providing assistance to people evacuating, and we are asking them to protect themselves against the gases, which can affect the respiratory tract."

He also urged people living near the volcano to avoid drinking from local water sources.

The 7,025ft volcano is located about 90 miles east of San Salvador, the capital. Its last significant eruption was in 1976.

San Miguel is one of the country's largest cities and is located 30 miles from the volcano.

Guatemala Volcano Erupts, 33,000 Evacuated: Erupting Volcano Del Fuego

Guatemala Volcano Erupts & 33,000 Are Evacuated: Photos Of Erupting 'Volcan Del Fuego'

The Guatemala volcano "Volcan del Fuego" erupted Thursday, forcing some 33,000 locals to flee the area, emergency services said.

Ash and smoke were spewed into the sky as the volcano began to erupt. The volcano lies 25 miles southwest of Guatemala City and began to send a cloud of ash into the sky in the early afternoon, Sergio Cabanas, director of emergency response in Guatemala's CONRED emergency agency, told Reuters.

Nearly 8,000 people have already been evacuated and almost 23,000 are awaiting evacuation, he added.

Guatemala has four active volcanoes, Reuters said, and the 2010 eruption of Pacaya covered 25 miles of Guatemala City with ash. Airports were closed and hundreds of families were evacuated.

Cabanas additionally said that 17 villages near Guatemala City were evacuated in the biggest such operation the country has ever seen.

Although the volcano is just six miles from Antigua, a popular tourist destination, Antigua was not in the evacuation zone according to NBC News.

The "Volcano of Fire" has spewed lava that billowed 2,000 feet down its slope, BLIPPITT reported.

"A paroxysm of an eruption is taking place, a great volcanic eruption, with strong explosions and columns of ash," Gustavo Chicna, a volcanologist with the National Institute of Seismology, Vulcanology, Meteorology and Hydrology, said to BLIPPITT.

He said the ash from the volcano was nearly half an inch thick in some areas and the government's disaster agency added that homes and buildings were covered with ash miles away.

This is the fifth time Fuego has erupted this year, but its biggest eruption since 1999, a Guatemalan scientist told NBC News.

Teresa Marroquin, a Guatemalan Red Cross coordinator, told NBC News that the group has set 10 emergency shelters and is sending hygiene kits and water.

"There are lots of respiratory problems and eye problems," she said.

Chinca added that "it's almost in total darkness" near the living mountain.

NASA ISS Crew: Living and Working in Orbit

Commander Dan Burbank (right) and Flight Engineer Anton Shkaplerov work in the Destiny laboratory of the International Space Station. Credit: NASA TV

The International Space Station’s Expedition 30 crew – Commander Dan Burbank and Flight Engineers Anton Shkaplerov and Anatoly Ivanishin – performed science experiments and participated in an emergency drill Tuesday.

Burbank, a NASA astronaut, began his workday almost immediately after the crew’s regular 1 a.m. EST wakeup time as he conducted the Reaction Self Test.

This 5-minute test helps crew members objectively identify any impacts to their performance caused by sleep loss, fatigue and disruptions to circadian rhythms.

Following the crew’s daily planning conference with flight control centers around the world, Burbank spent his morning setting up equipment for the Integrated Cardiovascular experiment and participating as its test subject.

Investigators use the data from these tests to measure the atrophy of the heart muscle that appears to develop during long-duration spaceflight and to develop countermeasures to mitigate those effects.

Experiments like this one are crucial to understanding and maintaining crew health as NASA moves towards space exploration beyond low-Earth orbit.

Meanwhile, Shkaplerov participated in a Russian cardiovascular study known as Pneumocard and later performed routine maintenance on the life-support system in the Russian segment of the orbiting complex.

His fellow cosmonaut, Ivanishin, conducted preventative maintenance on the ventilation system of the Zvezda service module.

After a break for lunch, all three Expedition 30 crew members teamed up for an emergency egress drill to remain familiar with the location of emergency equipment and hatches as well as the evacuation route.

In cooperation with the mission control centers around the world, the crew worked through the response procedures as if there were an actual emergency requiring a rapid departure and tagged up with flight controllers afterward to review the results.

Radiation Leak Incident at Three Mile Island leads to Evacuation

A radiation leak at Three Mile Island, the site of the worst nuclear accident in US history, has sent home about 150 workers, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission reported Sunday.

"They had an airborne radiological contamination alarm," NRC spokeswoman Diane Screnci told AFP. "They evaluated all the workers, a handful of workers -- I don't have a precise number -- had contamination. They since have been decontaminated," she said.

About 150 people work in the building where the leak occurred.

Screnci said what she called a "leak... happened at 4:00 pm Saturday (2100 GMT) and they resumed work in the contaminated building" near Middletown, Pennsylvania.

"There was no impact on public health safety and it does not appear to have an impact on the workers," she said adding that "this kind of incident occurs once in a while."

So far, "they don't know the origin of the contamination," Screnci said. "There were a lot of activities going on at the time and when the alarm sounded. The engineers are working to determine what the cause was."

"It's a minor incident," she said stressing it was "under control."

Three Mile Island suffered a major accident in 1979, with the core of a reactor partially melting down. Since then no new nuclear power plants have been built in the United States.

Nuclear energy supplies 20 percent of power in the United States with 104 reactors, while 50 percent comes from coal burning plants.

The rest is from natural gas, oil and renewable sources such as hydroelectric power as well as solar and wind power.