About Volcanoes

LOOKING back on the Mt. Lamington disaster and to other great volcanic upheavals of history, it seems we can almost make this rule: When a known volcano periodically lets off steam you can assume that it is reasonably “safe.” But when an area that has been inactive for centuries, or always, so far as modern man knows, starts growling and rumbling, just go for your life.

Almost invariably where a volcano has caused great loss of life, it has (a) been domant for centuries; and (b) given some warning of the impending eruption.

Mt. Lamington took at least 4,000 lives.

Other volcanoes have killed even more people. A few of the more famous volcanic eruptions are listed hereunder: — VESUVIUS: Before the Christian era it had lain dormant for centuries. It began its rumbling several years before it finally blew its top in 79 AD, burying the

towns of Pompeii and Herculaneum. It became quiet again after that effort, but again erupted in 1631, and killed 18.000 people. Since then it has been almost continually active, in a small way, and has thereby let off some of its energy.

KRAKATOA: A volcanic island be tween Java and Sumatra literally blew up with four terrific explosions in 1883. The noise is said to be the loudest ever heard on earth—it was heard as far away as Central Australia. Krakatoa was an old volcano, and it was uninhabited, but there were 36,000 casualties in Java and Sumatra from the tidal waves which it caused. Krakatoa had started to rumble in May, 1883. On August 27 it blew up.

TARAWERA, in New Zealand’s thermal region erupted in 1886 and destroyed the until then famous Pink and White Terraces. One hundred people were killed.

BANDAI SAN, about 180 miles from Japan, exploded in 1888, after 1,000 years of inaction. It. too, began with pre liminary rumblings and earthquakes—but gave only a day’s warning.

MT. PELEE, in Martinique blew up in 1902, after only 90 years of inaction. It gave warning by rumblings about two days before then a heavy cloud of Incandescent dust rolled down the moun tain side and killed the whole of the 40,000 inhabitants of the town of St. Pierre.

MORE recently, there has been (about 1944) the appearance, in a ploughed field in Mexico, of a 2,000 feet-high volcano—Paracutin —which, because it was more or less American, got more publicity that the 1937 effort of Rabaul’s Vulcan, which previously had been an apparently inoffensive little island (although it, too. had bobbed up out of the harbour about 1888). We are reminded now that when Vulcan started to rumble, etc., in 1937, a number of the leading citizens of Rabaul took row-boats and went out to have a look-see. Only when hot rocks and other odd things began to be flung out of the sea did they row for the shore. Shortly afterwards Vulcan erupted.

There seems no telling when or where the next Papuan-New Guinea eruptions will occur —but scientists are agreed that occur they will. The moral seems to be: when a mountain unexpectedly starts to rumble, or some other part of the scenery be haves oddly, take care! Send for the vulcanologist, and you go away somewhere to a safe area until he tells you to return.

MANY people are intrigued as to how one becomes a vulcanologist. A vulcanologist primarily is a geologist and, to a lesser degree, a physicist and chemist. Geologists have always been interested in volcanoes and the effect they have on the earth’s strata. A vul canologist differs from a geologist in that he gets there before it happens, usually.

A vulcanologist was appointed to Rabaul after the 1937 eruption to keep local volcanoes under constant observation.

The present P-NG vulcanologist, Mr. G.

A. Taylor, is stationed there, but has been at Popendetta since the eruption of Mt.

Lamington. He has flown over the area daily and, when activity has died down, will lead an expedition into the area to examine the results of the explosion at first hand. A troupe of Australian professional vaudeville artists, headed by comedian T. (“Tubby”) McDonald, is planning to make a Pacific tour shortly in a Pairmile launch. “Lester II.” They propose to visit Norfolk Island, New Caledonia, New Hebrides, Fiji, and Papua-New Guinea, putting on complete live artist shows at the various Islands centres and outport settlements.