A remote volcano in Ethiopia’s scorched Afar region roared back to life on Sunday, ending more than 12,000 years of silence in a spectacular eruption that blanketed villages in ash and sent towering plumes drifting across the Red Sea.
Hayli Gubbi, a little-known shield volcano roughly 800 kilometres northeast of the capital Addis Ababa, began erupting in the early hours of November 23. For several hours it hurled thick columns of ash and smoke as high as 14 kilometres into the sky, according to France’s Toulouse Volcanic Ash Advisory Centre (VAAC).
Satellite imagery showed the grey plume sweeping eastward over the Red Sea, eventually depositing fine ash as far away as Yemen, Oman, western India and northern Pakistan.
In the nearby settlement of Afdera, residents woke to what felt like an explosion. “It was as if a sudden bomb had been thrown,” local resident Ahmed Abdela told AFP by telephone on Monday. “Everything turned dark and the ground shook.”
By midday Sunday, a thick layer of ash had coated the village, forcing tourists bound for the otherworldly landscapes of the Danakil Depression – one of the hottest and lowest places on Earth – to turn back or remain stranded.
Local administrator Mohammed Seid confirmed there had been no loss of human life or livestock, but warned of longer-term consequences for the pastoralist communities that dominate the region.
“Many villages are completely covered in ash,” Seid said. “The grass is buried, so animals have nothing to graze on. This could become a serious problem if the ash doesn’t clear soon.”
Hayli Gubbi rises just 500 metres above the surrounding lava fields but sits in one of the most geologically restless corners of the planet. The Afar triangle marks the junction where three tectonic plates – the African, Arabian and Somali – are slowly tearing apart, creating one of the few places on Earth where an oceanic rift is forming on dry land.
According to the Smithsonian Institution’s Global Volcanism Program, Hayli Gubbi had shown no confirmed activity during the entire Holocene epoch, which began around 11,700 years ago as the last Ice Age ended. That makes Sunday’s eruption the volcano’s first in recorded geological history.
Scientists say the event is part of broader volcanic unrest in the region. Neighbouring Erta Ale, home to one of the world’s longest-existing lava lakes, has been active for decades, while a series of fissures opened near the town of Dabbahu as recently as 2005.
Authorities in the Afar regional state said they were monitoring the situation but had not yet recorded any injuries. Air traffic controllers issued warnings to pilots to avoid the ash cloud, which at its peak reached altitudes used by commercial jets crossing the Middle East.
For now, the eruption appears to have subsided, leaving behind a stark reminder of the raw power beneath one of the planet’s most extreme environments.
As cleanup begins in Afdera and herders search for patches of unburied pasture, residents are left wondering whether Hayli Gubbi has truly fallen silent again – or whether its 12,000-year sleep is only the first chapter of a new, restless era.
Agencies contributed to this report
