Word: iraz
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Dates: during 1964-1964
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Over the pleasant city of Cartago in Costa Rica towers 11,260-ft. Irazú, the only mountain in the world that has its own cabinet minister and a private retinue of physicians. Irazú has rated such attentions since March 13, 1963, when it started spouting enormous clouds of hot ash and became the country's top menace and tourist attraction (TIME, Jan. 17). Sightseers can park near the lip of the crater and actually stare down into the billowing pit. Usually the prevailing wind blows the ash away from the spectators, but last week Irazú took...
...less surprised by this than Irazú's chief physician, Volcanologist Haroun Tazieff, who was hired by .the Costa Rican government to study Irazú and try to predict its tantrums. Fearing exactly the kind of explosion that occurred last week, he urged that tourists be barred from the crater. Now the authorities have closed the tempting road to the summit...
Last month, along with five other Belgian and French volcanologists, Dr. Tazieff made an intimate study of Irazú, which staged several fine explosions for their benefit. There was nothing they could do to cure the eruption, of course, but on their recommendation Minister of the Volcano Jorge Manuel Dengo built an armored observatory on the edge of the crater and equipped it with instruments to report earth tremors that might precede an unusually violent outburst...
...layer of unstable ash has accumulated in the area between Cartago and the smoking mountain. With the rainy season approaching, it may turn into a slithery morass and, faster than a man can run, slide down the valleys, picking up rocks and trees. The first heavy rain to soak Irazú, Tazieff fears, may well start a giant mudslide capable of destroying Cartago...
...Costa Rican government appealed for aid, and the U.S. rushed in an initial 4,000 tons of cattle feed, plus 500 respirators for street cleaners. Costa Rican businessmen raised an emergency fund and bought three U.S. road-sweeping machines. But last week Irazú continued its eruptions, and San José could not sweep away the ash fast enough...