Under-city time bombs waiting to explode

Press, 29 August 1978, Page 17

Under-city time bombs waiting to explode

It could be London, Paris. Dublin, Washington, Mexico City, or Sydney even Christchurch.

There would be no warning: just a roar of deadly gas, and an avalanche of flaming molten lava. A volcano, dead for millions of years, would have sprung mysteriously and disastrous!'/ to life. It could happen next century, next year, next month ... or perhaps tomorrow. That is the view of volcanologists meeting recently in Rome to discuss the peril that at least 200 major towns and cries are living under. A peril that most are not even aware of. Now. experts at more than 20 geological rearch stations are to pressure the United Nations to finance a volcano warning unit which can investigate dormant

mountains and try to calculate how long they are likely to stay that way.

No part of the world is without dormant volcanoes, according to Dr Bruce Bolt, director of one of the world’s leading seismographic stations at the University of California.

For instance, Australia and the rich islands of the Pacific are all part of a long chain of volcanic disturbance which could spring to life at any time, he says. Russia and the Scandinavian countries are also sitting on time bombs of millions of tons of red hot lava bubbling vigorously away under the Icelandic seaways.

In fact, possible centres of volcanic activity are now known to be linked, like a chain, across the entire face of the earth.

Indeed, and earthquake anywhere on earth is almost certain to have volcanic links somewhere — perhaps thousands of miles away — and, of course, man is powerless to stop the' resulting devastation.

What the scientists are now seeking is some earl y-warning system world-wide that would tell of movements deep within the earth’s crust which may suddently bring a dead mountain into life. Right now, there is no sure way of telling ...

“Vesuvius has shown faint stirrings in the last few years. If, or rather when, it erupts again, more than two million people could die. “Mexico's ‘Mountain of Fire’ has been asleep for more than 500 years. But time means nothing to volcanoes. They, could stay,

harmless for another 500 years — or burst savagely into life right now.” The people of Mexico City, for instance, were shaken 30 years ago when a farmer working in a cornfield suddenly noticed smoke coming from beneath the furrows, and felt the earth tremble. Within minutes a volcanic mountain began to rise, belching flame and lava. In a week it was more than 500 feet high, rising to 1500 feet in 10 months.

Professor Tazieff believes that many cities in America and Australia are in danger from the Pacific firebelt which stretches from Hawaii to the Aleutian Islands, branching to the Solomon Group, Java, and Australia. Britain also sits on many ancient volcanic sites which run from beneath London to Wales

stretching as far as Edinburgh, Scotland, and the islands around the coast.

Ireland is just as vuh nerable, and even Clermont Ferrand in France could be engulfed if the long “dead” volcano in the Auvergne Mountains one day decided to wake up. At present, they are all peaceful, slumbering mounds. How long they will remain that way is no longer an academic question. It could be a matter of life and death. .

Belgian-born Professor Hanoun Tazieff, one of the world’s leading experts on volcanoes, believes that only a world-wide network of “listening posts” all reporting to an international “volcano headquarters” can avert future disasters. Terrifying evidence exists that he and his colleagues may be right, Just

over 50 years ago, without the slightest warning, the volcanic mountain of Katmai in the Alaskan chain thundered into life with the deadliest and most terrifying volcanic action of all. The mountain had been “dead” for centuries, but the boiling lava that suddenly gushed from Katmai could have buied a city as big as London. For miles around the uninhabited land was devastated and buried beneath 100 feet of molten rock and ash. An island 100 miles away was smothered in burning, searing dust. Hundreds of people were treated for shock, burns, and near suffocation./ Professor Taxieff believes that the world has been lucky in recent years

because all the volcanic eruptions have been in remote areas of the world. “statistics show that such an explosion in a populated area is long overdue, and the odds against a catastrophic eruption near a city are shortening every day,” he says. “In Europe and America we have been defying the laws of nature for far too long, living beside dormant volcanoes which have well deserved reputations for wholesale slaughter. “Naples has grown up around Vesuvius, the very mountain that wiped the great city of Pompeii off the map. When that took place, the ash was so thick it floated as far away as Turkey.”

B y

G. R. LANE,

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