Could this be the best way to protect people who are at risk from a threat like this?
The volcanic emergency in the Philippines has forced thousands of
people to leave their homes in a hurry.
In Ecuador people who live near an active volcano are being shown what to do
if disaster strikes. The idea is to spend more money on
preparing for the worst. Normally we arrive after the disaster struck
already in a community and we have to react. Now we are trying to anticipate.
This is volcanic ash and it can devastate entire communities.
That's what happened to Lydia who's a farmer in Ecuador close to the Cotopaxi Volcano.
An ash cloud blew into her village in 2015.
Day turned into night.
The whole community was covered.
Everyone was running up and down, not knowing where to go or what to do.
Because this was the first time this had happened, and nobody
had told us anything about the eruption.
It was a terrifying thing to have to go through.
Lidia didn't know how to keep her family and her animals safe.
She panicked and sold her cows to the first buyer she could
find for a fraction of what they were worth. This man hopes that in the future
he can stop people panicking. His phone is tracking activity inside the volcano
and the data on it is fed through a monitoring station. We can see if there's
earthquakes, if there's vibration, also we have other instruments installed to see
if there's some gas coming out or if there's ground deformation and that will
allow us to give an early warning.
Thanks to Ben the volcano alarm that warns villages when Cotopaxi is stirring
can now be rung up to 72 hours in advance. So everyone can evacuate calmly.
The Red Cross uses the extra time to hand out survival kits and evacuees are also
given cash to tide them over. And they're given help to build shelters to protect
their animals from ash. This event was just a practice. Lidia says it's taught
her what to do if it happens again.
What they taught us means we now know how to evacuate, how to protect our animals
and our children, so we can all make it out and not have to sell our animals.
The Red Cross says getting people ready for a future emergency can save lives and
money but it gets less attention and fewer donations than a real crisis.
Of course it's always more difficult if it's not in the media to get people and
really, people donate money for it I think at the moment it's still much more
difficult. It could be years before Cotopaxi stirs again.
But if it does, at least local people will feel better prepared.