Would You Move Back Into a Town Destroyed by a Volcano?

Building buried in ash from the 2008 Chaitén eruption, with the volcano in the background. Taken July 2008, Wikimedia Commons. It has been nearly 11 years since the surprise eruption of Chaitén in Chile, one of the largest explosive eruptions in the 21st century. The volcano remained active for a full 3 years and the volcanic ash and debris would be washed down the river valleys during heavy rains. In the end, parts of the town of Chaitén would need to be abandoned due to the influx of debris from the eruption. Yet, only a decade later, the areas that were abandoned during the eruption are being rebuilt -- a decision that shows the tension between human memory and geologic realities. The 2008 eruption of Chaitén started out big. The initial salvo from the volcano reached over 10-19 kilometers (35,000 to 55,000 feet) into the air and for most people (including volcanologists), it was the first they had heard of the Chilean volcano. At the time, it was thought that Chaitén hadn't erupted in thousands of years. More recent work done since the 2008 eruption found that the volcano last erupted in ~1640 AD, which goes to show how quickly a volcano can appear to have been quiet for a lot longer than it really has. That eruption in 1640 was about as large as the 2008 eruption -- a VEI 4. Looking even further back, Chaitén produced VEI 5 eruptions (so, 10 times larger) ~5,100 and 8,800 years ago. This was a volcano with a nasty history.