View original footage of Paricutín's nine-year volcanic eruption and the devastation experienced by surrounding communities

NARRATOR: This was once the site of a Tarascan Indian community. Today the streets, shops, and dwellings of more than five hundred people lie buried beneath lava. A short distance away, a steep-sided cinder cone marks the spot where Paricutin volcano heaved rock and ash from the earth for a period of nine years [volcanoes erupting]. In 1943, thick, sticky lava, driven by large volumes of gas, exploded from Paricutin's vents: material that was blasted into the air to cool and solidify. Much of it fell back around the vent, forming a cone-shaped mountain of cinders. The rest, carried by wind, spread a choking blanket of ash and dust over an area of twenty-five square kilometers. At night the fiery glow of falling cinders clearly showed the building of a cone, while the lava that buried the village poured from several small vents around the base of the new mountain. Paricutin erupted from a place where no volcano had been before. Now it is dormant. Its activity seems to have come to an end. But we know that some volcanoes have remained inactive for hundreds, even thousands, of years and then unexpectedly erupted again.