[Marina Kolbe, World News:] Japan's Mount Usu volcano has erupted, as scientists have been predicting. The volcano is on Japan's northernmost island Hokkaido. We are joined now by CNN's Tokyo bureau chief Marina Kamimura for more on the eruption. Marina.
[Marina Kamimura, Cnn Correspondent:] Well, Marina, Mount Usu finally indeed erupted after keeping residents in the area on edge for days now. The eruption occurred just less than an hour ago. That's just shortly after 1:00 local time. As you can see, there is smoke billowing out of the volcano. We're told by authorities that the smoke is now reaching 2,700 meters into the atmosphere. That's about 9,000 feet into the air. So far, there are only reports though of smoke and small rocks coming out of the volcano. No reports of lava or anything like that, although authorities say that magma coming up to the summit of the volcano had triggered this initial steam eruption that we saw about an hour ago. In terms of the emergency effort, the rescue effort, relief efforts on the ground right now, according to the National Broadcaster, one of the towns there are three towns located at the base of this volcano. All of the residents of one of the towns have now been told to evacuate. Actually, there were some 10,000 people evacuated out of the area earlier this week. But as I just mentioned, we're now being told that all of the residents of one of the three towns have been asked to leave the area as well. Marina.
[Kolbe:] Now Marina, I understand that Mount Usu last erupted in October of 1978, and it killed two people. Could you tell us more about that last eruption and how they were able to contain the number of deaths?
[Kamimura:] OK, actually it killed three people. That was in October of 1978. And that followed a previous eruption in 1977. It was quite similar to this in at that time there were small rocks and ash that came spewing out of the volcano. But then, as in now, authorities had evacuated many of the residents to safer areas. And the reason three people were killed was that there were actually mudslides. What happened is that there was snow on the mountaintop, just as there is now. So this is a concern this time around as well. And the snow melted, triggering these mudslides and demolishing about 200 houses that stood in the way. Marina.
[Kolbe:] CNN's Tokyo bureau chief Marina Kamimura reporting. END TO ORDER VIDEOTAPES AND TRANSCRIPTS OF CNN INTERNATIONAL PROGRAMMING, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE THE SECURE ONLINE ORDER FROM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com Search CNN.com CNNSI.com CNNmoney.com The Web