Devastating

Volcano Special

Devastating destruction

By Wally Hiambohn

TWO angry volcanoes spewing hot fury have devastated Rabaul, Papua New Guinea’s fourth largest town. Situated in the centre of a ring of volcanoes at the north-eastern end of the island of New Britain, it is now coated in thick volcanic lava and ash, much of its infrastructure damaged.

The Tavurvur and Vulcan volcanoes, with a history of erupting together in 1937 and 1941 blew their tops suddenly on the morning of September 19. Luckily, an earthquake and a succession of tremors within the preceding 24 hours had alerted the locality’s 40,000 to flee to safe areas in outlying parts of East New Britain Province.

Hot lava spewed from the two craters and columns of volcanic ash and smoke were sent up to 60 metres, spreading out over the island region, and reaching as far as West New Britain, New Ireland and Manus Provinces, and to the mainland coast.

Miraculously, only two deaths were reported

from the disaster.

The town of Rabaul was pitch dark for days, with a perpetual mass of dark ash hanging over it. Damage to the town was massive, with insurance companies placing initial estimates at a conservative one million kina. The PNG government and its people have launched a major relief programme.

“It seems to be quite a horrendous activity, with clouds thousands of feet in the sky. Rabaul is pretty severely damaged,” said Prime Minister Sir Julius Chan after his first aerial inspection on the afternoon of the eruptions.

National Disaster and Emergency chief Leith Anderson said, “The damage is astronomical. You have to see it to believe it ... the eruptions signalled the greatest disaster we’ve ever had to face in the history of Papua New Guinea.”

Lillian Wee, a resident who fled to Port Moresby, told a local journalist, “It was so frightening ... just like an atomic explosion, with a huge, mushroom shape taking over the whole sky,” Woo said. “The sky went black and the ash just went everywhere, covering cars with layers of thick white dust and all over people who ended up looking totally white.

Children were screaming and crying and really distressed, but people had to keep moving.”

An Australian, trapped in the town for two days, said by telephone, “I’m just waiting till it blows over, or blows me away. The place looks like it has been hit by a bomb, it’s pitch black and there’s about a foot of ash over the ground, over everything in fact. It’s great fireworks,” he said.

“One volcano goes off on one side and then there’s a flash from another side; it just keeps on going on every 10 seconds or so,”.

The volcano eruptions add to a whole series of natural disasters hitting PNG in the last 24

months, including floods, earthquakes. □

Mushroom smoke engulfs the sky: ‘Just like an atomic explosion'

After the fury was spent: a devastated landscape