Volcano forces evacuation of Chilean town

[Mark]

Thousands of people were being evacuated Saturday from a southern Chile town after a volcano began belching ash and shaking the area with tremors, forcing the cutoff of water supplies, authorities said.

A plume of ashes and smoke rises from the Chaiten volcano some 745 miles (1,200 km) south from Santiago, Chile. The tremors sent fears of through the area around Chaiten, a coastal town of 7,000, that the nearby volcano was about to erupt.

The area was covered in centimeters of ash from the volcano located 10 kilometers (six miles) away from the populated area. City water supplies were halted in Chaiten after falling ash fouled the system. Authorities were distributing water in tanker trucks.

For safety the authorities have called on a massive evacuation of the isolated Patagonian town opposite the island of Chile. On Friday hundreds were loaded onto boats to be taken to other cities in the region.