Yellowstone Quakes Shake Loose Eruption Fears

Jan. 12, 2009 -- Run for your lives ... Yellowstone's going to explode!

Hundreds of small earthquakes at Yellowstone National Park in recent weeks have been an unsettling reminder for some people that underneath the park's famous geysers and majestic scenery lurks one of the world's biggest volcanoes.

In the ancient past, the volcano has erupted 1,000 times more powerfully than the 1980 blast at Mount St. Helens, hurling ash as far away as Louisiana. No eruption that big has occurred while humans have walked the earth, however, and geologists say even a minor lava flow is extremely unlikely any time soon.

Some observers are nonetheless warning of imminent catastrophe.

"To those of us who have been following these events, we know that something is brewing, especially considering that Yellowstone is over 40,000 years overdue for a major eruption," warned a posting on the online disaster forum Armageddononline.org.

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Another Web site contained a page entitled "Yellowstone Warning" that encouraged "everyone to leave Yellowstone National Park for 100 miles around the volcano caldera because of the danger in poisonous gasses that can escape from the hundreds of recent earthquakes."

That site, which carried the U.S. Geological Survey logo, has since been taken down.

"A casual observer would be led to believe that was an official source," Yellowstone spokesman Al Nash said, pointing out that the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory, which monitors the park for seismic activity, hasn't changed the volcano's alert level from "normal."

Working with the Geological Survey, Nash issued a news release Thursday, saying no evacuation had been ordered.