Monday, July 6, 2009

Volcanoes - Dealers of Death by Land and Sea

By Gordan Gumpertz

In my adventure novel, a fictional undersea volcano is building to a monster explosion that could set off a killer tsunami and wipe out the Southern California coast. To make the scenario as real as possible, I dug into volcano research and became fascinated with the physics, the history, and the destructive power of these exploding mountains.

Volcanoes form when the heat deep inside the earth, often exceeding 2,000 degrees F, melts rock into liquid magma and forces it up to the surface through fissures in the earths crust. The most destructive type of volcano is the stratovolcano that forms where oceanic and continental tectonic plates converge. The magma feeding this type of volcano is rich in silica, making it heavy and sticky. It seals in the heat and gasses and allows the pressure to build up inside a mountain until it erupts.

People who live near a volcano often feel the earth tremors that normally precede an eruption. Since they aren't sure if or when it will blow or how violent the explosion will be should it come, they tend to go about their daily lives and wait to see what happens. That is why many thousands of people over the centuries have lost their lives to volcanic explosions.

In 76 AD Mount Vesuvius near Naples, Italy, exploded and buried the city of Pompeii and the thousands who lived there in tons of hot ash and volcanic rock up to 75 feet deep. Archeologists discovered that the thick blanket of ash sealed in and perfectly preserved Pompeii and its people as they were at the catastrophic moment.

In the 1700s, volcanic eruptions in Japan and Iceland killed 20,000. In 1815, Mount Tambora in Indonesia had a cataclysmic eruption that killed between 80,000 and 90,000 people. In 1902 Mont Pelee on the Island of Martinique exploded and took 30,000 lives.

In 1980, Mount St. Helens in the state of Washington erupted, completely destroying the landscape for hundreds of miles around and killing 60. A volcanologist taking scientific measurements on the mountain at the time of the blowout was one of the casualties.

Mount Pinatubo on the island of Luzon in the Philippines blew up in 1991. Mud, rock, and hot ash buried the homes of 80,000 people who had been evacuated from the area only hours before the explosion.
The Nevado del Ruiz volcano in Colombia exploded in 1985, melting the mountain's snow cap and creating a gigantic mudflow that entombed 22,000 people living in the valleys directly below the mountain.
Erupting volcanoes have also been responsible for some of history's most famous tsunamis.

The Thira volcano on the island of Santorini in the Mediterranean Sea between Greece and Turkey exploded in 1625 BC, sending a tsunami estimated at 500 feet in height crashing into Crete and wiping out the entire Minoan civilization. The blast was heard as far away as Sweden, and ash from the explosion fell in Greenland, Ireland, and the West Coast of North America. The mountain collapsed inward forming a water-filled caldera, or lagoon, 8 miles long and 4 miles wide. Five small islands around the rim are fragments of the original island.

The Unzen volcano on Kyushu Island in Japan erupted in 1792. The blast started an undersea landslide that in turn launched a 170-foot tsunami that swept along the Kyushu coast, destroying many villages and killing 10,000.

When the Tambora volcano on the Indonesian island of Sumbawa exploded in 1815, the pyroclastic flow of mud, debris, and lava plunged into the ocean and triggered a 30-foot tsunami that took over 10,000 lives on neighboring islands. The ash cloud from the eruption was so heavy and lingered in the atmosphere so long, that 1815 was called "the year without summer." It is believed that up to 90,000 people perished as a result of the blast, the tsunami, and the ash fall.

In August, 1883, the volcano on the island of Krakatau (Krakatoa) near Sumatra exploded with such force that its own island disappeared into the sea. The strength of the blast and megatons of debris crashing into the ocean started a 130-ft. tsunami that wiped out whole villages in nearby islands and along the Sumatra coast. The official death toll was put at 36,000, but many estimates place the figure well over 100,000.

There are hundreds of active volcanoes in the world today, on every continent, and many more hundreds that are dormant. A volcano can stay dormant for thousands of years and then suddenly come to life. Among the active stratovolcanoes in the United States today are Mount Baker, Glacier Peak, and Mount Rainier near Seattle; Mount St. Helens and Mount Hood near Portland, Oregon; Mount Shasta and Lassen Peak in Northern California; and Mount Spurr's Crater Peak near Anchorage Alaska.

Award-winning author Gordon Gumpertz is a former advertising agency owner and copywriter, a member of the Palm Springs Writers Guild, a UCLA graduate, and an instrument-rated private pilot. A native Californian, he lives with his wife Jenny in Palm Desert, California, only a few miles from the San Andreas Fault, where the Pacific Plate collides with the North American Plate. For more information about the author and his book TSUNAMI, visit http://www.tsunaminaturaldisaster.com/

Related Posts by Categories



Widget by Scrapur

No comments:

Post a Comment