Southern Chile's Calbuco volcano has erupted for the first time in more than four decades, sending a thick plume of ash and smoke several kilometres into the sky, local television images showed.
Chile's Onemi emergency office declared a red alert following Wednesday's eruption, which occurred about 1,000km south of the capital Santiago near the tourist town of Puerto Varas. The area is sparsely populated, with only a few small communities.
Video footage of the eruption, which occurred at around 6pm local time (21:00 GMT), showed a spectacular mushroom-shaped cloud of ash and smoke, that turned red as the sun went down.
About 4,000 people had evacuated from the area and an evacuation radius of 20km has been established, authorities said.
Chile's Interior Minister Rodrigo Penailillo gave a televised address after the volcano erupted, calling for calm. Penailillo said the military was being sent into Llanquihue province to help evacuate people and keep order.
He added that water was being sent to the area, as it was unclear how much ash may have fallen and contaminated water supplies in the area.
Later, Penailillo said there had been no reports of deaths, missing persons or injuries. He urged residents to evacuate and warned of possible lahars, a mix of water and rock fragments that flow down a volcano's slopes and river valleys.
Residents in rush for supplies
"The eruption happened about half an hour ago. There are a lot of people out in the streets, many heading to the gas stations to fill up on gas," Derek Way, a resident of Puerto Varas, told the Reuters news agency.
Trevor Moffat, who lives in Ensenada, some 10km from the volcano, said he and his family fled when it erupted.
"It sounded like a big tractor trailer passing by the road, rattling and shaking, guttural rumbling. ... We left everything there, grabbed my kid, my dog, got in the car with my wife," Moffat told Reuters.
Calbuco last erupted in 1972 and is considered one of the top three most potentially dangerous among Chile's 90 active volcanos, the AP news agency reported.
Chile, on the Pacific 'Rim of Fire', has the second largest chain of volcanoes in the world after Indonesia, including around 500 that are potentially active.
In March, volcano Villarrica, also in southern Chile, erupted in spectacular fashion, sending a plume of ash and lava high into the sky, but quickly subsided.
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