Ecuador, Japan on alert amid volcano threats

Ecuador's President Rafael Correa said Saturday he would declare a state of emergency as the Cotopaxi volcano spewed ash into the sky, prompting evacuations of several nearby villages.

Cotopaxi, a volcano not far from the Ecuadorean capital of Quito, spouted hot glass and rock after decades of inactivity and sent large gray puffs of ash 3 miles high, according to several news reports.

Officials said the evacuations were ordered as a precautionary measure as the volcano became increasingly active, but no landslides have been recorded yet, Agence France-Presse reported.

"We will declare a state of emergency based on the activity of the Cotopaxi volcano. Why have I made that decision? To secure resources ... to address a potential emergency and mobilize the necessary resources," Correa said in his weekly address, according to AFP.

Pablo Morillo, head of the Secretariat for Risk Management, told the news agency that several towns and river settlements in Cotopaxi province, some 28 miles south of Quito, were cleared. Officials maintained a yellow alert in the region, a mid-range warning, and said it would remain as long as Cotopaxi continued to stir, AFP reported.

"We will maintain the same alert, but since there are still no lahar (mud or debris) flows, the evacuation order is still only preventive," Morillo told AFP.

The news agency reported that Cotopaxi volcano is 19,000 feet high and is considered to be one of the most threatening in the region — both because of its size and because it is so close to well-populated towns.

Cotopaxi's last major eruption was in 1877 when muddy debris traveled more than 62 miles, CNN reported.

The Sakurajima volcano in Japan showed increased activity Saturday and Japan's meteorological agency warned residents on the country's southwestern island of Kyushu to get ready to evacuate, CNN reported.