Actually, it didn’t. But if you came across a June 5th Associated Press article entitled “3,500 Evacuate as Volcano Erupts in Southern Chile”, you might have read just that. It states “A rift more than six miles (10 kilometers) long and three miles (five kilometers) across was torn in the earth’s crust, officials said Saturday night.” The article, which appears to have been pulled from some online news outlets, at the time of this writing is still available on FoxNews.com:
The source of the author’s confusion appears to be the fact that the preexisting fissure at the Cordón Caulle eruption site was mentioned in the same local news reports that also described the size of the smoke column as being 10 km x 5km.
C’mon, AP, you guys are the ones I expect to still have a fact-checking budget!