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It was twenty years ago today...

that Kilaeua volcano began its current eruption. In that time it has added 544 acres of land and black-sand beaches to the southeastern shore of the Big Island of Hawai'i. According to the US Geological Survey's Hawaiian Volcano Obsevatory this ranks as the most voluminous outpouring of lava from the volcano's east rift zone in in the past six centuries.

You'd think madam Pele would at least want a weekend off now and then.
 
Mt. Etna about to blow again?
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -- Volcanic activity at Sicily's Mt. Etna, which has been rocked recently by quakes and an eruption, may become more frequent and potentially more dangerous in the future, Italian researchers said on Thursday.

They said they had evidence a big pool of magma was roiling just below the surface of the volcano.

Mt. Etna last jolted to life in October with a flurry of quakes. It erupted in December, injuring 32 people in an explosion at a tourist complex.

Domenico Patane of Italy's National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology and colleagues analyzed 647 earthquakes that originated near Mt. Etna between 1994 and 2001.

Their analysis suggests that during this period, a huge volume of magma intruded beneath the volcano through a weak area where two fault lines intersect, causing the quakes.

The quakes caused pressure that forced magma up into a shallower reservoir, they report in Friday's issue of the journal Science.

"Geophysical evidences (sic) ... indicate that a considerable quantity of magma is still accumulated beneath the volcano in the shallow storage zone," they wrote.

"Considering that the volcano has been intensely fractured during the last two flank eruptions, Mt. Etna eruptive activity could become more frequent, voluminous and potentially hazardous in the near future."
The Volcano webcam site now has two Etna webcams working, but nothing to see as I write. (Also has maps.)
 
Great webcam link Rynner!
Any idea what the light on the Stromboli image is?
Just in case it's gone in the morning or whatever, or more importantly in case it's incredibly obvious in the monring here's what it looked like about 00:10


Slv0017.jpg
 
It's now dawn in Italy, so nice views of the snow on Etna!

As for the Stromboli image, the light is high in the sky, so either the webcam caught a lump of molten rock shot up in the air...


...or it's a UFO! :D
 
Stromboli is smoking well. Here it is in daylight, for comparison.

(I have other pics earlier in this thread.)
 
Oldest human footprints found on Italian volcano
Three primitive humans who scrambled down a volcano's slopes more than 325,000 years ago left their footprints fossilised in volcanic ash. If the ages of the trails are confirmed, they could be the earliest known footprints of our Homo ancestors.

Paolo Mietto of Padua University and his colleagues examined three tracks of footprints on the Roccamonfina volcano in southern Italy, known to locals as "devils' trails". "Because they occur in volcanic rock, they have always been considered supernatural," says Mietto.
(Article includes photos.)
 
Ruf posted that earlier, here.

Actually, PY, my post was earlier!

But as the links are to different articles, Ruff's post is merged here. - ryn
 
Lava wave

Question
If I had to save myself by surfing down a molten lava flow, what would I be able to stand on that wouldn't melt from the heat of the lava?

Ben Williams (aged 6) , Bristol, UK

Answers
Just take an old surfboard, punch lots of holes through it and connect them to a water tank placed on top of the board. Water escaping through the holes will create the same effect that you can observe when spitting on a hot iron plate: the droplets dance on the plate for quite a long time because they are separated from the plate by a thin layer of steam, which is a bad heat conductor.

This effect would allow you to surf on the lava wave, because the board would be cushioned from the lava by the steam layer. The friction between the board and the lava would be virtually zero. I think that this creation should be known internationally as the sizzleboard!

Radko Istenic , Ljubljana, Slovenia


A lava surfboard must not only be melt-proof but it should also be less dense than the lava underneath and it should provide insulation for your feet.

If you are trapped at the summit of a volcano and you need to surf in order to escape, then you must use indigenous materials. Fortunately, volcanoes not only produce lava but also solid materials that are of roughly the same geological composition as lava but are less dense and more insulating because they contain gas bubbles.

A slab of this material, say 50 centimetres thick by 1 metre wide and 2 metres long, would float on molten lava and, just as important, it would melt quite slowly. I suspect that you could travel a mile or more before you would have to abandon it. Hopefully, by then, you would have been able to negotiate your way to an area of dry, cool ground.

However, if you know in advance that you will need to float on molten lava, you would be better off making a boat from a heat-resistant, or refractory material that would not melt and would last as long as you needed it. The vertical sides of the boat would also protect you from the heat radiated by the lava far better than a surfboard would.

The temperature of molten lava is usually about 1400 °C although it can be as high as 1650 °C depending on its chemical composition, so the best material to use for a boat is high-purity alumina insulating refractory concrete. This is made of aluminium oxide, which melts at 2000 °C, hardly reacts with molten lava and contains hollow bubbles, so it is slightly less dense than the molten lava it will have to float on, and is a good insulator too.

To construct your boat, make a mould by digging a pit in the ground of the shape you want the outside of the boat to be, then pound the soil in the pit until it is compact and smooth. You should then line the mould with plastic sheeting and mix the dry concrete with just enough water to form a stiff paste. Cover the plastic with a 10-centimetre layer of paste, line the concrete with another plastic sheet and fill the remaining cavity with water to press the concrete into place while it sets. The boat will be ready after a week.

Ross Firestone , Winnetka, Illinois, US


If the only consideration is melting point, your correspondent would not have much difficulty. Different types of lava melt at different temperatures, rhyolite at up to 900 °C, dacite at up to 1100 °C, andesite at up to 1200 °C and basalt at up to 1250 °C. Steel, with a melting point of 1400 °C, would be fine, but to be really safe, how about tungsten, with a melting point of 3422 °C?

However, your feet would get a bit hot, so it would be better to use a non-metallic insulating substance such as the following ceramics: Cr2O3melts at about 2250 °C and even Al2O3at about 2050 °C would be safe, and both would provide insulation for your feet.

I suspect, though, that the six-year-old questioner might have difficulty getting hold of such materials, so I suggest using oak. All woods, and especially oak, form a protective carbonised layer when burnt, which slows further combustion. Indeed, when designing a timber structure one can allow for this layer to provide fireproofing. Timber structures are always designed a little over the size that is actually required so that their structural integrity is retained in case of fire. A thin steel plate lining the outside of the board would protect against abrasion if the surfer wanted to go back to the top to repeat the experiment.

Malcolm Nickolls , Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire, UK
New Scientist
 
Dome of Montserrat volcano collapses
OLVESTON, Montserrat (AP) - Montserrat's volcano spewed thick clouds of ash into the air on Sunday, delaying flights across the Caribbean and plunging surrounding islands into a gritty haze.

Tree branches were snapped off from the weight of the ash and significant damage was done to surrounding vegetation on the British territory, said Richard Herd, director of the Montserrat Volcano Observatory. Elsewhere, flights were cancelled and one man reportedly died in St. Croix during a car accident that police blamed on poor visibility.

"There's no one in the area right now, but as a precaution we're asking people in surrounding areas to stay indoors. There's still a chance of more explosions and rock fall," said Herd on Montserrat.

A St. Croix man died when his car swerved off the road because of poor visibility due to the ash, police said. Debris blanketed much of the Dutch Caribbean territory of St. Maarten, putting a grimy coat of ash on houses, cars and trees. Residents were told to stay indoors or to wear surgical masks.
 
Big 'smokers' found in Indian Ocean
Scientists have discovered a "smoking" volcano 3,000 metres below the surface of the Indian Ocean.

The team on board the research vessel RRS Charles Darwin made the find when they detected a huge, dark plume of water, 600 metres thick and over 30 kilometres wide, rising hundreds of metres above a lava-strewn valley on the Carlsberg ocean ridge.

"Black smokers", often teeming with exotic lifeforms, are known to exist in the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans but their discovery in the Indian Ocean is very recent.

"The source of the plume is comparable to a suite of power stations churning out vast amounts of heat and smoky water," said Dr Bramley Murton, the scientist leading the research cruise.

As convection pushes sections of the Earth's crust apart, molten material rises to fill the gaps.

Water percolates down below the seabed and is superheated before gushing out from hot springs or vents at about 300 to 400 Celsius.

The smoky plume comes from iron-rich particles that solidify when hot mineral-laden fluids mix with cold deep-ocean water.

"If you think of a factory chimney pouring out smoke on a still day, the smoke goes vertically upwards but as it entrains air, eventually stops rising and starts to spread out," explained Dr Lindsay Parson, project leader of the mid-ocean ridge research group at Southampton Oceanography Centre (SOC), UK.

"That's exactly what these smokers do under water."

The communities of animals found at hydrothermal events are specially adapted to thrive in the turbulent, toxic environment.

Most depend on bacteria that use energy from chemicals in the water to make organic matter.

The next move for the research team is to organise an expedition to investigate the marine life.

The site may be a suitable test ground for SOC's new ultra-deep remotely operated vehicle, ISIS, which can explore ocean environments down to 6,500 metres.

"The Indian Ocean is the largest ocean that's left where we're still not sure what critters live there," explained Dr Parson.

"Lifeforms that live in the Pacific Ocean on these sorts of vents are dominated by tubeworms.

"We don't know of tubeworm communities in the Atlantic but we know there are fantastic numbers of specially adapted shrimps.

"This discovery is the link to find out whether the Indian Ocean communities are more like the Pacific or Atlantic, or whether they're some form of hybrid. It's like the Holy Grail to biologists worldwide."

US and Japanese researchers have previously explored vent activity elsewhere in the Indian Ocean.
Map and pics on page.
 
Mount Rainier called a threat
http://www.msnbc.com/news/950829.asp?0cv=CB10

MOUNT RAINIER NATIONAL PARK, Wash., Aug. 11 —Wedding cake white and big beyond words, Mount Rainier floats above Puget Sound like a child’s dream of what a mountain might be.

Dreams of Rainier come in handy here, for the mountain itself has a habit of disappearing in clouds for weeks or even months on end. The 3 million people who live in and around Seattle know, of course, that it is up here — nearly 2 3/4 miles high, encased in glacial ice and fattening itself up every winter with more than 50 feet of fresh snow.

During this freakishly warm, dry and cloudless summer in the Pacific Northwest, astonishing views of Mount Rainier have been uncommonly common. Clear sightlines have made it possible to gaze at Rainier and appreciate it less as an intermittent aesthetic pleasure and more for what the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) warns that it really is.

“A monumental threat,” said William E. Scott, scientist in charge of the Cascades Volcano Observatory, a USGS center that monitors volcanoes from California to Alaska.

Volcanologists determined in the late 1990s that the mountain is far more unstable than previously thought, and they have since persuaded local emergency management officials to launch an early-warning system and a major public-awareness campaign. Tens of thousands of people are being told to “enjoy the volcano in your back yard” but to be prepared to run away from it — fast. The town nearest Rainier has about 40 minutes to flee. Inside the national park that encircles the mountain, scientists in recent months have shortened the run-for-it survival time to five minutes.

Beneath its dreamy mantel of snow, Mount Rainier is an active volcano, and it is rotting from the inside out, especially on its western flank, which drains toward population centers. The volcano has a long, spotty history of spontaneous collapse and massive mudflows called lahars.

About 150,000 people now live atop lahars that have rioted down the slopes of Mount Rainier over the past 5,000 years. The lahars ran all the way to what are now the ports of Tacoma and Seattle, distances, respectively, of 50 and 75 miles.

No volcano in the lower 48 states packs so much risk so close to so many people, Scott said. Mount St. Helens, which erupted in 1980 and killed 57 people, is more active than Rainier, but it is not near large population centers.

Rainier, which has more glacier ice on it than all the other 12 Cascade volcanoes combined, is the only mountain in the contiguous United States where regional roads are marked with large white arrows and signs that say, “Volcano Evacuation Route” The signs are a coveted curiosity — people keep stealing them, and county emergency management officials keep buying more.
Another lahar (an Indonesian word that has come to mean “volcanic mudflow”) would almost certainly be an existence-ending event for the fast-growing town of Orting, Wash., about 30 miles downstream from Mount Rainier. Orting is in a valley flanked by the Puyallup and Carbon rivers, both of which originate in toes of glaciers up on the mountain.

The 3,760 residents of Orting live atop 50 feet of mud, boulders and tree stumps that used to be on the west slope of Mount Rainier. About 500 years ago, which was the last time the mountain shrugged its rotting shoulders in a major way, mud came roaring down the valley. The rot in Rainier is caused by gas inside the volcano, which degrades rock and turns it into more fragile clay. With the consistency of concrete and traveling about 40 miles an hour, that lahar shredded a forest and reamed out the valley. The USGS calculates that Mount Rainier burps this way every 500 to 1,000 years.

“The bad news is that the window of opportunity is now open,” said Steve Bailey, director of emergency management for Pierce County, where damage from Mount Rainier is most likely. “The good news is that the window is 500 years long.”

To minimize the bad news, Bailey said, the county bans construction of large new commercial buildings in the upper parts of valleys near the volcano. It has also installed an early-warning system that listens for lahars. If one is on the loose, the system sets off air-raid sirens that can alert about 30,000 people near Mount Rainier._The sirens could provide Orting residents with a 40-minute head start before major mud comes to town.

“It would be very difficult to get everyone out in that time period,” said Bailey, who said he is concerned about the large number of new, high-end houses being built in Orting. “A lot of people who are buying those homes don’t understand the hazard.”

Someone who does understand is Rex Kerbs, principal of Ptarmigan Ridge Intermediate School in Orting. Twice a year, he drills his students, ages 8 to 11, in the art of heading for the hills when sirens go off.

The best way to avoid dying in a lahar, experts say, is to go up a high hill — fast. “It is two miles to the hillside from our school,” said Kerbs, who studied geology before becoming a principal. “We peel out the back of the school, walk along a dike [toward Mount Rainier and the oncoming wall of mud] and then cross a bridge that leads to the hillside. Some of the kids can get to the hill in 30 minutes. The stragglers get there in about 45 minutes. The mud gets there in 40 minutes.”

That may be a problem, Kerbs said. But in the case of a lahar, he said, “we could shave 10 minutes off the time. I hate to say it, but if fear and anxiety is coming into the picture, if adrenaline is pumping, we can make it.”

There are plans — and some state funding — for the construction of footbridges near the school. They would allow students to cross the Carbon River and head for the hills without first taking a long high-speed walk.

In preparing students for the possibility of a lahar, Kerbs said, he is careful not to frighten them. “Be prepared, not scared, that’s what I tell them,” he said. “I tell them it is a tradeoff for living near a volcano, like hurricanes in Florida or tornadoes in Kansas.”

Up here in the national park that encircles Mount Rainier, even being prepared is probably not going to do anyone much good. A new risk assessment by the USGS has drastically narrowed the survival window in the case of a lahar. It shriveled from a maximum of 23 minutes to five minutes. That applies to people working in National Park Service buildings and staying in a large guest lodge in a valley on the much-visited southwest corner of the park.

Jill Hawk, chief ranger at the park, found out about the narrower window last fall. She said she immediately modified her mind-set. Near her office, there is a footpath that may allow her to scramble 60 feet up out of the valley in five minutes. “I don’t have time to evacuate people,” she said. “I have time to run.”
 
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/3183047.stm

Article about predicting eruptions - a trailer for tonight's repeat of a Horizon programme.

SCIENTIFIC DOCUMENTARY: Horizon
Channel: BBC 2
Date: Thursday 28th August 2003
Time: 21:10 to 22:00 (starting this evening)
Duration: 50 minutes.
(Volcano Hell)
Series exploring scientific issues. This edition looks at the work of two scientists who, following an eruption in Colombia that killed 23,000 people, set out to establish what causes these cataclysmic events. Using totally different methods, each thought they had worked out how to predict imminent disasters, until, years later, they tested their theories at another volcano - with catastrophic results.
(Repeat, Subtitles)

Excerpt taken from DigiGuide
 
volcanoes

by the way one of the cameras has been destroyed at Stromboli in one of the last eruptions :eek!!!!:
 
Yup Garoned, I was just going to point that out but you beat me to it-
The webcam has been destroyed by the last strong explosion occurred on April 5, 2003

Volcanoes- great stuff. I love everything about them. My ideal holiday would include a visit to an active one, even if I had to beat a hasty retreat.;)

One of my heroes is the geologist who stayed on top of Mt St Helens, whose last known words were '...........and I think she's going to................':(
 
Long article on the danger to aircraft from volcanic plumes. Begins:
On Dec. 15, 1989, KLM flight 867 from Amsterdam was approaching its destination in Anchorage, Alaska, when the plane flew into what appeared to be a thin layer of normal clouds. Suddenly, according to flight-crew reports, it got very dark outside and the air in the cockpit filled with a brownish dust and the unmistakable smell of sulfur. One minute after beginning a high-power climb to escape the cloud, all four of the Boeing 747's jet engines died when the combustion within them was extinguished. When the engines spun to a stop, the generators ceased making electrical power, leaving only battery-powered instruments functional. Airspeed sensors began to give false readings and then ceased to provide data. A cockpit warning light erroneously suggested there was a fire in one of the forward cargo bays.

[Map]
PERILOUS PATHS. Flight routes over the North Pacific to and from east Asia pass over or near about 100 Alaskan, Russian, and Japanese volcanoes (red triangles).
Alaska Volcano Observatory

Only after losing more than 3 kilometers of altitude did the pilots on the crippled jet get all engines restarted. Because the aircraft's front windows looked as if they'd been sandblasted, the flight crew could see what lay ahead only by leaning near the cabin walls and peering forward through the cockpit's side windows. The pilots landed the plane and its 231 passengers safely in Anchorage, but it took million—including four new engines and a paint job—to restore the aircraft.

What could wreak such havoc? Volcanic ash.

Flight 867's encounter with a volcanic plume was one of aviation's most dramatic, but it's by no means unique. More than 90 aircraft have flown through ash clouds in the last couple of decades. None of those incidents has resulted in fatalities, but experts say that damages to the aircraft probably total at least 0 million.

The system now in place to warn airlines about ongoing volcanic eruptions and the locations and altitudes of the resulting ash plumes is valuable but not perfect, and scientists are working to make it better. They're improving techniques of interpreting satellite imagery, one of the cornerstones of the current warning system. They're also developing sensors that could form the heart of ground-based networks to monitor remote volcanoes or be mounted on an aircraft to scan for ash in its flight path.

Look out below

Of the 1,500 or so active volcanoes on Earth, around 600 have erupted in historical times. About 60 eruptions occur each year, several of which spew ash clouds up to altitudes where they threaten aircraft, says Ed Miller, a retired airline pilot now at the Air Line Pilots Association in Herndon, Va. On about 25 days per year, he notes, there's ash somewhere around the world at the altitudes where jets cruise.
With pics, etc.
 
Seismic scaremongers say 'Where
Mount Fuji, a universal symbol of Japan, is fuming and that means there could be a whole lotta shakin' goin' on real soon, according to Weekly Playboy (10/21).

Steam started gushing out of Fuji's slopes in late September, the first time such a phenomenon had been reported in the postwar era, according to the Meteorological Agency.

While such emissions would normally suggest seismic activity, or earthquakes, the agency said the fumes were weak and not an indication that Mount Fuji was about to blow its top.

"Observation data collected from seismographs and angle meters on Mount Fuji show there are no irregularities," an agency spokesman tells Weekly Playboy.

Officials haven't checked the site of the emissions since their first inspection. They're hampered because the fumes occurred on a Self-Defense Force firing range closed to the general public and requiring even government officials to secure special permission to get there.

Despite the agency's reassurances that Fuji's fumes are nothing more than a load of hot air, the emphasis it placed on saying they were the active volcano's first postwar emissions is kinda scary. Prewar analysis of the mountains steam emissions were made, including a chilling discovery of fumes immediately after the Great Kanto Earthquake that leveled Tokyo and Yokohama on Sept. 1, 1923.

Seismologists and volcanologists have long felt there is a link between Mount Fuji's eruptions and major earthquakes. Despite a spate of recent quakes across Japan, including the Tokachi temblor in Hokkaido that was the biggest the world has seen for 2 1/2 years, the agency persists in saying Mount Fuji's volcanic activity has no connection to the seismic shakes.

Ryukyu University Prof. Masaaki Kimura, who has long studied the connection between Mount Fuji's volcanic activity and earthquakes along the nearby Izu Peninsula, is one who feels the agency may be missing the mark.

"Volcanic activity on Mount Fuji in September 1923 was caused by the same build-up of plate pressure that sparked the Great Kanto Earthquake, and there is a possibility the eruptions started before the quake occurred. The depression earthquake and fumes that poured forth recently are in the same area of the mountain where many volcanic earthquakes occurred about two years ago. There's a possibility the Tokachi earthquake of Sept. 26 has sent magma toward the surface," the seismologist tells Weekly Playboy.

History offers an ominous precedent. Mount Fuji had its last major eruption in November 1707. The blast followed years where all parts of Japan experienced severe quakes and just six months after the biggest temblor ever recorded in the world's most earthquake-prone country.
 
I am not too keen on volcanoes, maybe because I spend quite a lot of time living on one.

I have a small house on Pico in the Azores. There have been eruptions in historical times, in the 1700's. Nothing explosive just lava flows, though one day I guess it has to blow :(

Heres a pics I took last summer...

pico_1.jpg

pico_2.jpg

crater_lake.jpg
 
Scientists Revisit an Aegean Eruption Far Worse Than Krakatoa
or decades, scholars have debated whether the eruption of the Thera volcano in the Aegean more than 3,000 years ago brought about the mysterious collapse of Minoan civilization at the peak of its glory. The volcanic isle (whose remnants are known as Santorini) lay just 70 miles from Minoan Crete, so it seemed quite reasonable that its fury could have accounted for the fall of that celebrated people.

This idea suffered a blow in 1987 when Danish scientists studying cores from the Greenland icecap reported evidence that Thera exploded in 1645 B.C., some 150 years before the usual date. That put so much time between the natural disaster and the Minoan decline that the linkage came to be widely doubted, seeming far-fetched at best.

Now, scientists at Columbia University, the University of Hawaii and other institutions are renewing the proposed connection.

New findings, they say, show that Thera's upheaval was far more violent than previously calculated — many times larger than the 1883 Krakatoa eruption, which killed more than 36,000 people. They say the Thera blast's cultural repercussions were equally large, rippling across the eastern Mediterranean for decades, even centuries.

"It had to have had a huge impact," said Dr. Floyd W. McCoy, a University of Hawaii geologist who has studied the eruption for decades and recently proposed that it was much more violent than previously thought.

The scientists say Thera's outburst produced deadly waves and dense clouds of volcanic ash over a vast region, crippling ancient cities and fleets, setting off climate changes, ruining crops and sowing wide political unrest.

For Minoan Crete, the scientists see direct and indirect consequences. Dr. McCoy discovered that towering waves from the eruption that hit Crete were up to 50 feet high, smashing ports and fleets and severely damaging the maritime economy.

Other scientists found indirect, long-term damage. Ash and global cooling from the volcanic pall caused wide crop failures in the eastern Mediterranean, they said, and the agricultural woes in turn set off political upheavals that undid Minoan friends and trade.

"Imagine island states without links to the outside world," Dr. William B. F. Ryan, a geologist at Columbia's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, told a meeting of the American Geophysical Union.

Scientists who link Thera to the Minoan decline say the evidence is still emerging and in some cases sketchy. Even so, they say it is already compelling enough to have convinced many archaeologists, geologists and historians that the repercussions probably amounted to a death blow for Minoan Crete.

Rich and sensual, sophisticated and artistic, Minoan culture flourished in the Bronze Age between roughly 3000 and 1400 B.C., the first high civilization of Europe. It developed an early form of writing and used maritime skill to found colonies and a trade empire.

The British archaeologist Sir Arthur Evans called the civilization Minoan, after Minos, the legendary king. His unearthed palace was huge and intricate, and had clearly been weakened by many upheavals, including fire and earthquakes.

Nearby on the volcanic island of Thera, or Santorini, archaeologists dug up Minoan buildings, artifacts and a whole city, Akrotiri, buried under volcanic ash like Pompeii. Some of its beautifully preserved frescoes depicted Egyptian motifs and animals, suggesting significant contact between the two peoples.

In 1939, Spyridon Marinatos, a Greek archaeologist, proposed that the eruption wrecked Minoan culture on Thera and Crete. He envisioned the damage as done by associated earthquakes and tsunamis. While geologists found tsunamis credible, they doubted the destructive power of Thera's earthquakes, saying volcanic ones tend to be relatively mild. The debate simmered for decades.

In the mid-1960's, scientists dredging up ooze from the bottom of the Mediterranean began to notice a thick layer of ash that they linked to Thera's eruption. They tracked it over thousands of square miles.

Dr. McCoy of the University of Hawaii, then at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute on Cape Cod, took part in these discoveries, starting a lifelong interest in Thera. By the early 1980's, he was publishing papers on the ash distribution.

Such clues helped geologists estimate the amount of material Thera spewed into the sky and the height of its eruption cloud — main factors in the Volcanic Explosivity Index. Its scale goes from zero to eight and is logarithmic, so each unit represents a tenfold increase in explosive power. Thera was given a V.E.I. of 6.0, on a par with Krakatoa in 1883.

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The similarity to Krakatoa, which lies between Sumatra and Java, helped experts better envision Thera's wrath. Krakatoa hurled rock and ash more than 20 miles high and its blasts could be heard 3,000 miles away. Its giant waves killed thousands of people.

Despite the power of Thera, the Danish scientists' evidence raised doubts about its links to the Minoan decline. Their date for Thera's explosion, 1645 B.C., based on frozen ash in Greenland, is some 150 years earlier than the usual date. Given that the Minoan fall was usually dated to 1450 B.C., the gap between cause and effect seemed too large.

Another blow landed in 1989 when scholars on Crete found, above a Thera ash layer, a house that had been substantially rebuilt in the Minoan style. It suggested at least partial cultural survival.

By 1996, experts like Prof. Jeremy B. Rutter, head of classics at Dartmouth, judged the chronological gap too extreme for any linkage. "No direct correlation can be established" between the volcano and the Minoan decline, he concluded.

As doubts rose about this linkage, scientists found more evidence suggesting that Thera's eruption had been unusually violent and disruptive over wide areas. Scientific maps drawn in the 1960's and 1970's showed its ash as falling mostly over nearby waters and Aegean islands.

By the 1990's, however, the affected areas had been found to include lands of the eastern Mediterranean from Anatolia to Egypt. Scientists found ash from Thera at the bottom of the Black Sea and Nile delta.

Dr. Peter I. Kuniholm, an expert at Cornell on using tree rings to establish dates, found ancient trees in a burial mound in Anatolia, what now is in the Asian part of Turkey. For half a decade those trees had grown three times as fast as normal — apparently because Thera's volcanic pall turned hot, dry summers into seasons that were unusually cool and wet.

"We've got an anomaly, the biggest in the past 9,000 years," Dr. Kuniholm said in an interview.

More intrigued than ever, Dr. McCoy of the University of Hawaii two years ago stumbled on more evidence suggesting that Thera's ash fall had been unusually wide and heavy. During a field trip to Anafi, an island some 20 miles east of Thera, he found to his delight that the authorities had just cut fresh roads that exposed layers of Thera ash up to 10 feet thick — a surprising amount that distance from the eruption.

And Greek colleagues showed him new seabed samples taken off the Greek mainland, suggesting that more ash blew westward than scientists had realized.

Factoring in such evidence, Dr. McCoy calculated that Thera had a V.E.I. of 7.0 — what geologists call colossal and exceedingly rare. In the past 10,000 years only one other volcano has exploded with that kind of gargantuan violence: Tambora, in Indonesia, in 1816, It produced an ash cloud in the upper atmosphere that reflected sunlight back into space and produced the year without a summer. The cold led to ruinous harvests, hunger and even famine in the United States, Europe and Russia.

"I presented this evidence last summer at a meeting," Dr. McCoy recalled, "and the comment from the other volcanologists was, `Hey, it was probably larger than Tambora.' "

Dr. Ryan of Columbia has woven such clues into a tantalizing but provisional theory on how distant effects might have slowly undone Crete. First, he noted that winds at low and high altitudes seem to have blown Thera's ash into distinct plumes — one to the southeast, toward Egypt and another heavier one to the northeast, toward Anatolia. Even if the changes wrought by Thera helped trees there, they apparently played havoc with delicate wheat fields.

Mursilis, a king of the Hittites, set out from Anatolia on a rampage, traveling between the plumes to strike Syria and Babylon and seize their stored grains and cereals. The subsequent collapse of Babylon into a dark age, Dr. Ryan said, also undid one of its puppets, the Hyksos, foreigners who ruled Egypt and traded with the Minoans.

He theorized that the new Egyptian dynasty had no love of Hyksos allies. So Minoan Crete, already reeling from Thera's fury, suffered new blows to its maritime trade.

In an interview, Dr. Ryan said he and other scholars were still refining dates on some of the ancient events, promising to better fix their relation to the eruption. The outcome of that work, he said, could either strengthen or undermine his thesis.

Even without such distant upsets, some prominent archaeologists have concluded that the volcano's long-term repercussions meant the end of Minoan Crete. For instance, they argue that the revolt of nature over the predictable certainties of Minoan religion probably crippled the authority of the priestly ruling class, weakening its hold on society.

In scholarly articles, Dr. Jan Driessen, an archaeologist at the Catholic University of Leuven in Belgium, and Dr. Colin F. MacDonald, an archaeologist at the British School in Athens, have argued that changes to Cretan architecture, storage, food production, artistic output and the distribution of riches imply major social dislocations, and perhaps civil war.

By 1450 B.C., Mycenaean invaders from mainland Greece seized control of Crete, ending the Minoan era.

Thera's destructiveness was probably the catalyst, Dr. Driessen and Dr. MacDonald wrote, "that culminated in Crete being absorbed to a greater or lesser extent into the Mycenaean, and therefore, the Greek world."
 
Prospect said:
Years ago - well the early 80's anyway - when I was at school I'm sure I remember reading/being told (probably in a geology lesson) about a plan to tap into geothermal energy in Cornwall. There's a large batholith under Cornwall which is stilll comparatively warm and the idea was to sink a shaft down and use the heat to power turbines. Obviously nothing ever came of it, but I've always wondered whether it might one day be practical - and it's as 'green' as it's possible to get.

That's bang on Prospect !

It was called the 'hot rocks' project, they did actually manage to sink thier borehole (somewhere near Longdowns I think ?) and produce moderate amounts of steam and hot water... but I think the whole project died in the late 80's early 90's due to lack of funding.... isn't it always the same with these things !! ??

Perhaps Rynner or Sidecar_jon would remember this too ??
 
Any Alaska-based correspondents on the MB?

Scientists: Volcano awakening from slumber

Thursday, July 29, 2004 Posted: 10:06 AM EDT (1406 GMT)

Mount Spurr's 1992 eruption sent ash as high as 65,000 feet.

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (Reuters) -- An Alaska volcano that last erupted 12 years ago, raining ash on the state's largest city, is now rumbling with earthquakes that may be a precursor to another eruption, scientists said Wednesday.

A series of shallow temblors that began in February beneath Mount Spurr, a volcano 80 miles west of Anchorage, are now numbering 15 to 20 a day, said officials at the Alaska Volcano Observatory.

"When we see an eruption, it commonly will start off this way," said Jackie Caplan-Auerbach, a seismologist at the observatory.

But it is also common for such sequential earthquakes beneath volcanoes to simply tail off, she said.

Seismologists will be looking for other possible signs of an impending eruption, such as gas or steam venting from the crater on the 11,070-foot peak, more frequent earthquakes or shallower earthquakes, which could indicate that magma was moving upward, Caplan-Auerbach said.

"We're officially keeping a much closer eye on it than we would if it were at background levels," she said.

In 1992, Mount Spurr's eruption sent an ash plume up 65,000 feet, disrupting air traffic.

The Alaska Volcano Observatory has classified Mount Spurr as deserving a "yellow" concern status, one step above the background "green" status.

Two other Alaska volcanoes are classified as subjects of elevated concern. Mount Veniaminof, a 7,073-foot volcano on the Alaska Peninsula and about 510 miles southwest of Anchorage, has been emitting small amounts of steam and ash since April. Shishaldin Volcano, a 9,372-foot peak in the eastern Aleutian Islands, has also been emitting ash.

Alaska has about 60 volcanoes that have been active in the past.

The Alaska Volcano Observatory is run by the U.S. Geological Survey, the University of Alaska Fairbanks and the Alaska Division of Geological and Geophysical Surveys.

Copyright 2004 Reuters. All rights reserved.

http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/science/07/28/environment.volcano.reut/index.html
 
World's Largest Volcano Might Erupt


KAILUA-KONA, Hawaii (AP) - Earthquakes have been rumbling more frequently deep beneath Mauna Loa, suggesting that the world's largest volcano is getting ready to erupt for the first time in 20 years, scientists said.

``We don't believe an eruption is right around the corner, but every day that goes by is one day closer to that event,'' said Paul Okubo, a seismologist at the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory on the Big Island.

Mauna Loa erupted for three weeks in 1984, sending a 16-mile lava flow toward Hilo. Since then, the U.S. Geological Survey estimates that more than $2.3 billion has been invested in new construction along Mauna Loa's slopes.

Since July, more than 350 earthquakes have been recorded far beneath the 13,677-foot-high Mauna Loa, said Don Swanson, scientist-in-charge at the observatory.

``Mauna Loa is grumbling, growling and getting ready to come out of its den,'' he told West Hawaii Today for Sunday's editions.

The earthquakes have been what seismologists call ``long period,'' which means their signals gradually rise above the noise generated by usual seismic activity.

``Such a concentrated number of deep, long-period earthquakes from this part of Mauna Loa is unprecedented, at least in our modern earthquake catalog dating back to the 1960s,'' Okubo said.

While forecasting an eruption cannot be exact, Okubo noted that the mountain today is wired with more state-of-the-art tracking and measuring technology than ever before.

The definite sign of an impending eruption is an earthquake swarm - a dramatic increase in the number of daily tremors from a handful, to dozens to ultimately hundreds, Okubo said.

Mauna Loa is within Hawaii Volcanoes National Park, which also contains the well-known Kilauea volcano. Kilauea has been erupting continuously since Jan. 3, 1983.

09/13/04 07:27

Copyright The Associated Press.


Content Picks From
Netscape's Editors


Hawaiian Volcano Observatory's Mauna Loa section, including eruption history and lava flow predictions.

An explanation of how Mauna Loa's height far exceeds Mount Everest's from Extreme Science.

Live images from the NOAA's Mauna Loa Observatory's cams.

A hiker's tale: Much more grueling experience than any of us could have imagined.

The Jet Propulsion Laboratory's collection of volcano images.

Hawaii Volcanoes National Park site.



http://cnn.netscape.cnn.com/news/storymain.jsp?number=1

[If you go to the page for the story, some of those "content picks from Netscape's editors" links listed after the main text are waaaay cool. :cool: -lopaka]
 
Volcanic Unrest in Mount St. Helens Crater
By MELANTHIA MITCHELL

SEATTLE (AP) - Seismologists believe there's an increased likelihood of a hazardous event at Mount St. Helens due to a strengthening series of earthquakes at the volcano.

``The key issue is a small explosion without warning. That would be the major event that we're worried about right now,'' said Willie Scott, a geologist with the USGS office in Vancouver.



Initially, hundreds of tiny earthquakes that began Thursday morning had slowly declined through Saturday. By Sunday, however, there had been more than 10 temblors of magnitude 2.0 to 2.8, the most in a 24-hour period since the last dome-building eruption in October 1986, Scott said.

The quakes have occurred at depths less than one mile below the lava dome within the mountain's crater. Some of the earthquakes suggest the involvement of pressurized fluids, such as water or steam, and perhaps magma.

Mount St. Helens is about 55 miles northeast of Portland, Ore.

A group of scientists planned to visit the mountain Monday and conduct a flyover to test for carbon dioxide and sulfur gases, which could suggest the involvement of magma. They'll also erect additional seismic sensors and sophisticated global positioning devices to measure activity.

In the event of an explosion, Scott said the concern would be focused on the area within the crater and the flanks of the volcano. It's possible that a five-mile area primarily north of the volcano could receive flows of mud and rock debris.

That portion of the mountain blew out during the May 18, 1980, eruption that left 57 people dead, devastating hundreds of square miles around the peak and spewing ash over much of the Northwest.

``We haven't had a swarm of earthquakes at Mount St. Helens since 2001,'' state seismologist Tony Qamar said. ``Clearly something new is happening.''

Qamar said if an eruption did occur it would possibly involve ash and steam, called phreatic eruptions.

The cause and outcome of the swarm were uncertain Sunday evening.

``There's been no explosions, there's no outward sign that anything is occurring. This is all based on the pattern of earthquake activity that is occurring below the dome,'' said Scott.

Experts believe there is ``an increased probability of explosions from the lava dome if the level of current unrest continues or escalates,'' USGS and the University of Washington Pacific Northwest Seismograph Network in Seattle said in a joint statement.

A similar swarm of quakes in November 2001 and another in the summer of 1998 did not result in an eruption. However, the quakes could increase the likelihood of small rock slides from the 876-foot-tall lava dome within the mountain's crater.

In the 1986 eruption, magma reached the surface and added to the pile of lava on the crater floor.

On the Net:

Cascade Range Volcanoes: http://vulcan.wr.usgs.gov/Volcanoes/Cascades/CurrentActivity

Mount St. Helens Seismicity Information: http://www.pnsn.org/HELENS/welcome.html


09/27/04 05:22

© Copyright The Associated Press. All rights reserved. The information contained In this news report may not be published, broadcast or otherwise distributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press.



http://cnn.netscape.cnn.com/news/en...LS&idq=/ff/story/0001/20040927/0523433418.htm
 
Steam...

Source
Alarm as Mount St Helens erupts steam

26 minutes ago
SEATTLE, United States (AFP) - A huge plume of steam and ash erupted from Mount St. Helens, the volcano that devastated swathes of the US northwest when it erupted 24 years ago, witnesses and geologists said.

Breaking News: Steam Eruption at Mt. St. Helens

"The mountain began erupting some steam (around 12:15am (1915 GMT)," said Mount St. Helens park ranger Greg Pohl after a colleague first spotted the plume.

"At the moment it looks like a very small event and there is an ash pall that appears to be very small that seems to be heading in a westerly direction."

Seismologists at the US Geological Survey have been warning of a possible imminent eruption following more than a week of growing earthquake activity in the area.

But, they stressed, any explosion of the peak would not be as serious as the deadly 1980 explosion that killed 57 people and covered large swathes of the northwestern United States in ash.
 
Lava...

http://ap.tbo.com/ap/breaking/MGB7OK0X71E.html
Mount St. Helens Lava Formation Sprouts 300-Foot Extension of Glowing Rock

By Erin Van Bronkhorst Associated Press Writer
Published: Nov 6, 2004

SEATTLE (AP) - A lava formation inside Mount St. Helens' crater has a new, glowing protrusion the size of a 30-story building.
The protrusion, which glows red at night, has risen by 330 feet in the past nine days, pushed up by magma, or molten rock, within the volcano, scientists said Friday.

"It seems like every time you think you know what's going on, (the volcano) twists and does something different," said Jeff Wynn, chief scientist for volcano hazards at the Cascades Volcano Observatory in Vancouver.

The overall lava formation began building last month and has grown to roughly the size of an aircraft carrier, 900 feet long and 250 feet wide. Magma is reaching at the surface at the rate of 7 to 8 cubic meters - about one large dump truck load - every second, Wynn said.

"What we have been noticing with this monster is that it was growing at an unusually high rate and it was spreading out horizontally like a big pancake," Wynn said. "And now all of a sudden it's like a huge piston has been thrust up."

Like the old lava dome, formed in the six years after St. Helens' devastating May 18, 1980, eruption, the new formation is made of a type of volcanic rock called dacite, Wynn said. More than 63 percent silica, it tends to be sticky and viscous, unlike the free-flowing lava of Hawaii.

Temperatures on the new protrusion can spike as high as 1,200 degrees Fahrenheit.

The volcano rumbled back to life Sept. 23, with shuddering seismic activity that peaked above magnitude 3 as hot magma broke through rocks in its path. Molten rock first reached the surface Oct. 11, marking the resumption of dome-building activity that had stopped in 1986.

A more explosive eruption, possibly dropping ash within a 10-mile radius of the crater, is possible at any time, scientists have said.
 
Scientists Keep Eye on Alaska Volcanoes


ANCHORAGE (AP) - Scientists continue to monitor two volcanoes that the Alaska Volcano Observatory says could send dangerous ash into the air at any time.

Mount Spurr, 80 miles west of Anchorage across Cook Inlet, shook itself from a 12-year sleep in early July and has been in Code Yellow status ever since, with daily small earthquakes.

Code Yellow indicates an eruption is possible and could occur with no warning, according to the Alaska Volcano Observatory.

Mount Veniaminof, about 500 miles southwest of Anchorage on the Alaska Peninsula, changed from Code Green, or ``dormant,'' to Code Yellow about Jan. 1. On Jan. 10, the observatory upgraded its activity to Code Orange, indicating the volcano is ``in eruption.''

Ash plumes from Veniaminof can be seen on sunny days and have been photographed from planes. Even when clouds obscure the summit, seismic records indicate the eruption is continuing, said John Power, a geophysicist at the observatory.

``We have some magma at Veniaminof,'' he said.

Reports have come from Perryville, 22 miles south-southeast of the volcano's summit, that its plumes have been flashing orange at night, Power said.

The volcano is experiencing what scientists call a ``Strombolian eruption,'' a low-level, continuous eruption accompanied by minor ash plumes. The category is named, Power said, for an Italian volcano that appears to have been erupting for about 2,500 years.

Both volcanoes are near enough to major airways that scientists are monitoring them every day, Power said. Volcanic ash, if blown high enough, poses a serious threat to aircraft.

The Veniaminof plume is apparently rising no higher than 12,000 feet, not enough to interfere with trans-Pacific air routes. Scientists and others are worried about that possibility, Power said. The ash can pose risks to smaller planes at lower altitudes. Pilots on the Alaska Peninsula are ``taking steps to steer away,'' he said.

Spurr is in its seventh month of elevated earthquake activity, according to the observatory. The quakes are too small to feel.

About 15 per day occur about four miles below the mountain's summit, according to the observatory's Web site. The average has been as high as 20.

The mountain has not shown signs of an imminent eruption.

Since July, volcanologists have been analyzing data collected by instruments on and off the mountain. They now feel, Power said, that another group of small earthquakes has been occurring beneath Spurr's summit since 2003, but at the base of the Earth's crust, 12 to 25 miles down.

Power said the two groups of earthquakes probably are linked to magma moving into cracks in the crust.

``There's some increased magmatic activity, and that's what's causing the shallower seismicity and the melting of the ice cap,'' he said.

In mid-July and early August, observers flying above Spurr noticed small flows of mud and rock and a recently formed ``ice cauldron'' in the summit ice cap, according to the Web site.

The collapse has been caused by increased heat from below the summit, experts said. The sink hole was about 165 feet in diameter and about half that in depth, and contained a pond of icy meltwater. It has since grown.

Mount Spurr erupted three times in 1992, spewing noxious ash over Anchorage and other cities.

Ash that fell on Anchorage in August 1992 was only a few millimeters thick, according to observatory scientists. However, people were compelled to wear face masks, cover computers and change auto filters as they stirred up clouds of gritty ash wherever they walked and drove.

Before 1992, Spurr last blew its top in 1953. Both eruption sequences occurred below Crater Peak, a separate volcanic vent on Spurr, about 2.5 miles south of the summit.

The last time the summit vent is known to have erupted is about 5,000 years ago, according to the observatory.

Information from: Anchorage Daily News, http://www.adn.com


02/01/05 07:20

© Copyright The Associated Press. All rights reserved.


source
 
I just read that a couple of volcanoes have started to erupt on Sumatra, I found this page quite interesting:

Huge Earthquake, tsunami and Volcano expected North West Sumatra
(13.04.2005)

The area around the Island of Sumatra in Indonesia continues to be hit by earthquakes of various magnitudes and there are fears that this may be a prelude to something much bigger.

The "ring of fire", an area around the edge of the Pacific Ocean has seen many quakes this year, but this is perhaps not that unusual, as such activity occurs all the time. However, the quakes near Sumatra, which have been almost daily since December's huge earthquake, continue to cause concern.

Seismic readings have shown that an area West of the Northern area of Sumatra (below the Ocean floor) is still very active and earthquakes have been recorded at various magnitudes. There seems to be a tremendous pressure building as the Continental plates push into each other and the question is, which area will be affected most by the end result?

Logic, and the results we are seeing now, suggest that Sumatra (which sits on the edge of the India/Australia plate) will end up the loser in this battle.

It is our belief that a new earthquake (possibly the largest ever recorded in modern times) will again occur just off the West coast of Northern Sumatra, which will result in a tsunami perhaps 80 meters high (near the epicenter) and this will trigger a volcanic eruption on the Island itself. Many of the smaller Islands off the west coast of Sumatra may be lost completely.

There has already been a minor eruption at Mount Talang, which is just some 40 kilometers east of the coastal capital of West Sumatra province, Padang. However, it is our opinion that a larger eruption will happen slightly further North near Toba.

As many will already know, Toba on Sumatra was the location of the last super-volcano to erupt, which almost caused the extinction of mankind 74,000 years ago. Another super-volcano exists under Yellowstone National Park and this has been showing signs of changes.

Whilst a large earthquake near Sumatra could cause the deaths of millions, a super-volcano, like that under Yellowstone, would almost certainly leave no survivors at all (in a fairly short time).

It is impossible to predict when Sumatra can expect the next big quake, but we feel that this is very close. It could happen tomorrow, next week, or next month, but we feel sure it will happen soon.

Sadly, there is very little that can be done to prevent such a disaster and it is not practical to evacuate the people from this region for an event that may take some time to happen.

Perhaps the worse scenario of such a large earthquake would be the effects it has on other areas of the planet. The biggest danger would be the eruption of a super-volcano and although the one under Yellowstone hasn't erupted for 640,000 years, there are signs that this may happen again (the fourth time in just over 2 million years).

heres the page where I found that: http://www.profindpages.com/news/2005/04/13/MN876.htm
 
Here's the report on the Sumatra volcano eruptions that Jack Ruby mentioned before the quoted article:

Thousands flee Sumatra volcano

Tuesday, April 12, 2005 Posted: 11:33 PM EDT (0333 GMT)


TANJUNG AUA, Indonesia (Reuters) -- More than 25,000 panicked residents have been evacuated from the slopes of a rumbling volcano on Indonesia's Sumatra island and officials raised the alert level as the mountain's activity intensified.

The heightened rumbling of Mount Talang has coincided with a string of moderate earthquakes on Sumatra, which is still recovering from a massive December 26 quake and tsunami that killed nearly 130,000 people in Aceh province to the north.

"The status of Mount Talang is now at top alert," Surono, a vulcanologist from the Directorate of Vulcanology and Geophysics in the Java city of Bandung, told Reuters.

Local officials said 26,000 people had been evacuated from the slopes and areas around the 2,690 meter (9,825 ft) volcano in West Sumatra province, adding that number was likely to rise.

Witnesses saw sparks of fire coming out of Mount Talang early on Wednesday morning. The volcano lies near the city of Padang, 938 km (528 miles) northwest of Jakarta.

"It was like the end of the world," said Syafrudin, 65, a farmer, after fleeing from the mountainside and speaking outside a makeshift tent near the village of Tanjung Aua.

"I first heard the rumble and then the ground started shaking ... then there's smoke and sparks. We all ran in fear."

Vulcanologists said they could not confirm whether lava had actually spewed out. But smoke had billowed up to 1,000 meters (3,280 ft) high from the volcano's crater and ash had traveled up to 12 km (7.5 miles) away, Surono said.

"The activity has definitely stepped up and we have alerted airport officials to watch out for smoke," Surono said.

Scientists have warned of increased seismic activity in Indonesia as the plates that make up the earth's crust adjust following the magnitude 9 earthquake in December that triggered massive tsunami waves across the Indian Ocean.

"The plates' movements release energy underground and the energy could add to the activity of many volcanoes on Sumatra but it doesn't mean this will trigger an eruption," said Surono.

"Coincidentally, the pressure inside Mount Talang had been high and the quake activity has increased that energy."

Fear and panic

President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, who has urged Indonesians not to see the spate of quakes and the December tsunami as a sign of more natural calamities to come, would visit the area later on Wednesday, officials in Jakarta said.

Elvi Sahlan, deputy mayor of the town of Solok near the volcano, said many residents were frightened.

"Up till 2 o'clock this morning we have evacuated around 26,000 people from the surrounding areas and the number is likely to increase because there are many others who have not been evacuated," Sahlan said.

Many residents spent the night in makeshift tents on open fields while others took refuge at government buildings and sports stadiums in nearby towns.

"The whole family is stressed. It's better to be here now than to live in fear," said Yusmalidar, 40, who had just been evacuated in open fields while others took refuge at government buildings and sports stadiums in nearby towns.

"The whole family is stressed. It's better to be here now than to live in fear," said Yusmalidar, 40, who had just been evacuated in a government truck with his wife and three children.

One local official said there was a shortage of tents and water among residents.

The mountain first began rumbling on Tuesday.

Indonesia -- but especially Sumatra -- has been hit by daily aftershocks since the massive earthquake on December 26. A quake off Sumatra on March 28 killed at least 676 people, many on Nias island off Sumatra's west coast.

Indonesia is a vast archipelago of some 17,000 islands that lies along the geologically active "Pacific Ring of Fire" and has more than 100 active volcanoes.

Copyright 2005 Reuters. All rights reserved.

http://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/asiapcf/0 ... index.html
 
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