karen, its not exactly dangerous (usually! Ill knock on some wood!), the closest active one is about 80 miles away, this one is about 100 miles away. Usually as long as they are blowing off steam and pressure in smallish eruptions there is less of a danger of large eruptions. The town I work in has air-raid type sirens that are there in case of a tsunami. Mostly its just inconvenient to clean up after, you have to wear a dust mask if you are outside during an ashfall and it smells like sulfur, and its really bad for your car to drive during the ashfall. Not very good for your paint either, but the ash is really good for the soil. There are tons of little earthquakes though, some not so little ones too, about a month or so ago there was a 5.7 magnitude one, it made my house sway! No damage but some cracked paint though. I think that we are pretty good at taking it all in stride, it just comes with the territory.
And this has only happened twice in the 6 years that Ive lived here, so you have to deal with hurricanes way more often!
I guess I gave the wrong finger to the wrong man...
