Public warned away as Japanese volcano spews ash
A volcano erupted in Japan on Wednesday (October 20), blasting ash several miles into the sky and prompting officials to warn against the threat of lava flows and falling rocks.
There were no reports of people injured or missing as of Wednesday evening, and police said that 16 people who had gone hiking on the mountain earlier on the day came back safely.
Mount Aso, a tourist destination on the main southern island of Kyushu, sent plumes of ash over two miles high when it erupted at about 11:43 a.m. local time, the Japan Meteorological Agency said.
It raised the alert level for the volcano to three on a scale of five and told people not to approach.
The director of Japan's volcanic observation division, Tomoaki Ozaki, said there was a possibility the volcano would erupt again.
There's also a risk of large falling rocks and lava flows within a radius of about half a mile around the mountain's crater.
Television networks broadcast images of a dark cloud of ash looming over the volcano that swiftly obscured large swathes of the mountain.
Ash falls from the mountain in the prefecture of Kumamoto are expected to shower nearby towns until late afternoon, the weather agency added.
