ANCHORAGE, Alaska – Lonnie Kennedy was taking everything in stride after he and his family were rescued from their cattle ranch near an erupting volcano. The mountain, on the other hand, remained agitated, spewing out a huge plume of ash more than 6 miles high.

“No worries,” Kennedy said Monday, when asked how he and the family were doing after being rescued by a fishing vessel.

The Okmok Caldera, a 3,500-foot volcano on Umnak Island about 60 miles west of the fishing port of Dutch Harbor, erupted Saturday and was still in a near state of continuos eruption on Monday. It's ash plume reached more than 6½ miles high and was moving southeastward over the North Pacific.

“It is still kind of upset,” said John Power, a geophysicist with the United States Geological Survey's Alaska Volcano Observatory. “It is still pushing out ash. It is still behaving explosively.”

When the volcano last erupted in 1997, it remained active for eight months, producing a significant amount of lava and ash.

This time, the volcano's seismic activity peaked a few hours after the initial explosion Saturday and has been slowly declining since.

Power said a “thermal anomaly” showed up on satellite imagery on the western side of the Okmok Caldera. Scientists aren't sure if it is lava because the huge ash cloud is blocking the view.

“If it follows the script, we would expect to see some lava at some point,” Power said.

Kennedy, members of his family and two ranch hands were picked up by a fishing vessel Saturday evening that had answered an urgent call from the Coast Guard. It took them to Dutch Harbor.

Kennedy, whose ranch is 6 miles from the volcano, said he expects his 5,000-head of cattle are doing fine.

If the ash becomes so deep they can't eat the grass, cattle can go a long time without food, he said. The island has plenty of water.

“Animals, generally speaking, survive natural disasters better than humans do,” he said.

In the next few days, Kennedy hopes to get back to the ranch to check on the cattle, start up the generators and get the freezers going again.

But that all depends on the volcano, he said.

“It is all up in the air, except it came back down,” Kennedy said.

---