May 8 (Bloomberg) -- Chile pulled its remaining soldiers and civilians out of the Patagonian town of Chaiten last night as a volcano 6 miles away spewed hot gas and ash across the country.

Four residents of Chaiten and 24 people from Santa Barbara were removed, according to Erika Canales, a spokeswoman for the National Emergency Office. The government yesterday obtained a court order allowing it to force from their homes people living within 50 kilometers (31.1 miles) of the peak.

A column of gas, steam and ash from a crater 2,600 feet (792 meters) has scattered debris as far as Argentina's Buenos Aires province, almost 800 miles away, according to that country's meteorological service. There are 500 people still in Futaleufu, a village about 45 miles from the volcano, Canales said.

``I'm staying until the police tell me to leave,'' said Adriana Radwanski, a guide at H20 Patagonia, an adventure-tourism company based in Futaleufu. She said she has been driving people to Argentina and bringing back supplies, including food for abandoned pets.

The volcano last night began throwing out incandescent clouds of rock and gas accompanied by flashes of electricity and a stench of sulfur, creating a 12-mile-high column of gas, ash and rock, the emergency office said. Were it to collapse, it could release a so-called pyroclastic flow, Chile's geology service said on May 6.

Pyroclastic Flow

A pyroclastic flow is a mix of superheated rocks and gas that can move at speeds of more than 50 miles an hour (80 kilometers an hour), destroying almost everything in its path, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

Chile has so far evacuated 6,000 people from the volcano area, Canales said. More than 50,000 cattle and sheep, as well as household pets, were left behind by the evacuation. Chile's air force took some veterinarians into the town yesterday to tend to the animals, Chaiten's mayor, Jose Miguel Fritis said in a telephone interview.

``Our priority is to save people's lives,'' Fritis said.

The town of Chaiten has no roads connecting it with the rest of Chile, so the evacuation took place by sea. Boats are now restricted from mooring at the town's quay because if the volcanic column does collapse, anyone in the town would have only 15 minutes to leave the area, Fritis said.

The volcano, also named Chaiten, last erupted about 9,000 years ago, the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration said on its Web site. It is part of the Andes mountain range that runs the length of Chile and is dotted with hot springs and volcanoes, including the Llaima volcano that began erupting with lava on Jan. 1.

To contact the reporter on this story: Sebastian Boyd in Santiago at sboyd9@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: May 8, 2008 10:57 EDT