Volcanic eruption for Pacaya
Volcanic Erupt
How the score is calculated
The score starts at 8. It adds points from recorded affected, deaths, displaced and casualty counts, plus terms found in the story title, event type or status. For each count, only its highest matching band is used.
- Affected people
- 1–999: +5 · 1,000–9,999: +12 · 10,000–99,999: +20 · 100,000–999,999: +28 · 1 million+: +35
- Deaths
- 1–9: +8 · 10–99: +14 · 100–999: +22 · 1,000+: +30
- Displaced people
- 1–9,999: +6 · 10,000–99,999: +12 · 100,000+: +18
- Casualties
- 100 or more: +8
- Story wording
- +10 for terms such as catastrophe, famine, war, conflict, major earthquake, mass casualty or critical. Otherwise, +5 for active, ongoing, emergency, outbreak, cyclone or hurricane.
Score bands: Watch 0–24 · Moderate 25–49 · High 50–74 · Critical 75–100. Scores are capped at 100. Missing or unparseable figures add no points.
This is a rule-based WorldsAid triage indicator, not an official or independently validated classification. It does not account for recency or local context, and it can understate events with incomplete reporting. Check the linked sources.
Historical record
Status: CLOSED · Imported 2026-10-07
Closed for this historical import at the site owner’s request; not a new assessment of current conditions.
In brief
- What happenedUpdates on volcanic activity (Smithsonian) The Smithsonian/USGS Weekly Volcanic Activity Report provides information about global volcanism on a weekly basis.
- How many affectedThe cited sources do not yet provide a reliable affected-person total.
- What help is neededResponse priorities should be confirmed in the linked source reports as needs change.
What changed
First retained snapshot
No earlier verified snapshot is present in the recovered dataset. This record remains available as the historical baseline.
Situation
Updates on volcanic activity (Smithsonian) The Smithsonian/USGS Weekly Volcanic Activity Report provides information about global volcanism on a weekly basis. Latest Pacaya report has been published on 24 Mar 2021 08:01. INSIVUMEH reported periods of intense activity at Pacaya?s Mackenney Crater during 17-18 March. Explosions produced dense ash plumes that rose 500-1,000 m above the crater rim and drifted 25-30 km S, SW, W, NW, and N. Incandescent material was ejected 300-500 m above the crater and fell within a 600 m radius of the crater. Lava flows on the S flank were 1.5 km long and set fire to vegetation at the advancing edge. Two new lava flows were visible; one traveled 400 m E and the other traveled 500 m S. Ashfall was reported in El Rodeo (4 km WSW), Patrocinio (about 5 km W), El Cedro (9 km NNW), San Francisco de Sales (5 km N), Amatitl?n (12 km N), and Villa Nueva (16 km N). Strong explosions during 21-23 March generated dense ash plumes that rose as high as 1.5 km above the summit. The plumes drifted 25-30 km NE, E, SE, and S, causing ashfall in Los Llanos, Los Pocitos (5 km S), Los Dolores (6 km SE), El Rodeo, Patrocinio, Mes?as Alta and Mes?as Baja, and Santa Elena Barillas (6 km ENE). Incandescent material was ejected 500 m above the crater and fell within 300-600 m of the crater. A lava flow on the SW flank was 1.5 km long, a flow on the S flank was 300 m long, and the E-flank lava flow had lengthened to 500 m. On 23 March ash plumes drifted 50 km NW, N, and NE, causing ashfall in Pepinal San Francisco de Sales, Los Pocitos, Los Dolores, Mes?as Altas and Mes?as Bajas, Santa Elena Barillas, Villa Nueva, and in the capital of Guatemala City (25-30 km NNE). Ash fell at Guatemala's international airport, Aeropuerto Internacional La Aurora, 50 km N of Pacaya, causing the airport to close. Soldiers swept ash off of the runway and incoming flights were diverted to El Salvador. Sources: CNN ,Instituto Nacional de Sismologia, Vulcanologia, Meteorologia, e Hidrologia (INSIVUMEH) See the detail here
Linked charities and agencies
WorldsAid verification
A WorldsAid editor reviewed this record against the retained source record, cleaned feed formatting and checked the crisis, place and reporting date. No reliable human-impact total was promoted where the source did not provide one. Earlier observations remain in the evidence history instead of being silently overwritten.
What we knew when
- WorldsAid record entered the retained historical dataset.
- Last verification represented by this immutable snapshot.
Earlier figures are never replaced by later values; additional observations are retained as new ledger entries.
Provenance
This page renders the last verified WorldsAid cache directly in HTML. It does not treat generated summaries as primary evidence.
Cached dataset: worldsai_drup771.sql.gz
Verified
SHA-256 fad10e4d824d589adb354ef5c6fb4cca7627f9054a96fbfd253f34f35d06b1c1No external source link was stored for this record.