Alaskans Prepare For Volcanic Eruption 293
An anonymous reader writes "Mount Redoubt, or Redoubt Volcano, is an active stratovolcano in the largely volcanic Aleutian Range of Alaska. The once quiet volcano has begun to roar once again. Its last eruption was in 1989 and geologists suggest that the next one is upon us. Alaskans who lived through the earlier eruption are stocking up on breathing masks and goggles. Starting on Friday, January 23 2009, the level of seismic activity increased markedly, and on Sunday AVO raised the Aviation Color Code to ORANGE and the Volcano Alert Level to WATCH. On the basis of all available monitoring data AVO regards that an eruption similar to or smaller than the one that occurred in 1989-90 is the most probable outcome. We expect such an eruption to occur within days to weeks." From the AP article: "Alaska's volcanoes are not like Hawaii's. 'Most of them don't put out the red river of lava,' said the observatory's John Power. Instead, they typically explode and shoot ash 30,000 to 50,000 feet high — more than nine miles — into the jet stream. 'It's a very abrasive kind of rock fragment,' Power said. The particulate has jagged edges and has been used as an industrial abrasive. 'They use this to polish all kinds of metals,' he said." The server for the Alaska Volcano Observatory appears to be overloaded and is unresponsive.
Really? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Really? (Score:5, Funny)
Yup, that's the way we say it in Chicago. Just ask the mare.
Re:Really? (Score:5, Funny)
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Yeah. Someone should invent a spell checking program.
Re:Really? (Score:5, Funny)
You betcha! (winks)
pansys... (Score:5, Interesting)
There are another 12 active volcanos in the area.
There is the valley of ten thousand smokes which is a super volcano (Katmia)there also.
I have been through several of these since '75. Augustine (three times) Redoubt (now the third time) Spurr, so it isnt anything special.
It does however give me a chance to sit on the beach and video tape the event hopefully.
So nothing to see here, go back to your wimpy ice storms and snow while we Alaskans handle the real manly stuff
There there now nothing to be frightened of...just a little volcano farting....
Re:pansys... (Score:5, Insightful)
Good luck to you. I hope that your risk assessment, based on 'human time,' isn't overridden by a powerful volcanic incident, occurring in geologic time.
Re:pansys... (Score:4, Insightful)
Okay, you are
But perhaps not terribly consistent.
Why would you
if there is
.
Aside from a cool volcanic eruption, what am I missing?
Bah! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Bah! (Score:5, Funny)
My grandpappy stayed on this mountain, and I'll be damned if I'm going to leave it! I'm staying righ#@$#@%$NO CARRIER
Ok, so we've got someone who is unwilling to evacuate. Check. Now all we need is a fairly attractive MILF who may sire the future leader of the human resistance^W^W^W^W^W^W^W^W^Wis the mayor of a small town. Oh and Pierce Brosnan too. Can't forget him. Add those two things in and I think we've got ourselves a movie ;)
(Bonus points for adding in a family dog that will survive all manner of bad situations even as the humans around him are dropping like flies)
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Better than Tommy Lee Jones stopping lava with concrete and fire hoses.... ... oh and a building.
Re:Bah! (Score:5, Informative)
Ah, I'd forgotten about that one. Yeah that was pretty cheesy. They did actually manage such a feat [articlesextra.com] in Iceland once upon a time. Of course it took millions of gallons of water (far more then you'd get from fire trucks) and they didn't stop the lava flow -- all they did was divert it from a harbor that they were trying to save.
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Tom Jones! We need Tom Jones in the movie too.
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It's been done. [nwsource.com]
Re:MOD PARENT DOWN. (Score:4, Funny)
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maybe they drop bits as the frequency fades, what was ABCDEF, becomes !"#$%&, etc... then not enough to interpret as a char, then NO CARRIER/SIGNAL LOST...etc...
Ocol (Score:5, Funny)
Fi Noly Ilnux ahd a psellchecker.
adding fuel to the (server) fire (Score:5, Funny)
And so you post a direct link to it on the slashdot front page?
Way to go, kdawson, way to go. You've ensured the Alaska Volcano Observatory site is going to be down even longer.
Why would you do that? Did that site molest you when you were young or something?
Re:adding fuel to the (server) fire (Score:5, Funny)
Re:adding fuel to the (server) fire (Score:5, Funny)
I did the same, but for another reason: when it goes down, you have to make sure it /stays/ down.
Re:adding fuel to the (server) fire (Score:4, Funny)
Re:adding fuel to the (server) fire (Score:5, Funny)
I'll just set up a batch job to keep pinging it until it comes up...
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I'm sure we have nothing at all to do with this. Nothing at all...
I have a vague memory of St. Helens (Score:5, Informative)
I find this to be pretty exciting. I was just a little kid when St. Helens blew her top. I remember the ash coating our cars in Colorado. I thought it was so cool that it was snowing dirt.
Then again, I don't live right under the thing and my home, livelihood, health and property aren't currently being threatened by microscopic airborne razor blades.
Have any slashdot readers been close to an erupting volcano? Especially the subduction zone variety? Can you give us an account of what it's like?
These ring-o-fire volcanoes usually explode rather than ooze due to the composition of their magma. There's lots of dissolved gasses that like to become undissolved in massive bangs.
Re:I have a vague memory of St. Helens (Score:5, Informative)
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I've been in several earthquakes, the largest being 7.8, and I've never heard the "earth roar". My most recent was earlier this month in Costa Rica [cnn.com], where I live.
I've heard my house rattling, I've seen things falling off my tables and walls. But the only time I've heard the earth "roar" was while watching Hollywood movies of earthquakes.
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Perhaps your hearing is limited in the low frequencies, or you haven't been in enough earthquakes, or you need to be in one away from buildings?
I have been in countless minor but very local earthquakes and some major ones, and have often noticed a deep rumbling or "roaring" sound before the first bit of obvious shaking arrives. The local ones were the loudest, sometimes consisting of a rumble and then one sharp bang which sounded like something crashed into my house.
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Call me crazy, but I think a volcanic plume is beautiful. I love the pattern in the the clouds of the pyroclastic flows.
And this is a good time for us to observe a volcano fairly close to a major population center, so we can be ready when Yellowstone erupts on 12/21/12 at 11:11 GMT.
Re:I have a vague memory of St. Helens (Score:5, Funny)
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9 mile high in this case.
Re:I have a vague memory of St. Helens (Score:4, Informative)
Then again, I don't live right under the thing and my home, livelihood, health and property aren't currently being threatened by microscopic airborne razor blades.
Those microscopic airborne razor blades will probably be distributed across much of the US due to the jet stream.
On the plus side, a dust mask is probably sufficient protection for those without beards.
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AK is pretty far up on the globe compared to the continental US. If I were you, I would invest in a Canadian dust mask company.
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You breath through your beard?
Re:I have a vague memory of St. Helens (Score:4, Funny)
Montserrat (Score:2)
I've also seen Etna (at NAS Sigonella from 15 miles), St. Helens (recent minor eruptions), and Kilauea (March '08 explosions). I've seen magma from Etna and Kiluea.
Poor Observatory (Score:3, Funny)
And we're helping the poor sysadm by linking from
Sarah Palin (Score:5, Funny)
And with all that ash in the air... (Score:5, Funny)
she won't be able to see Russia from her backyard anymore!
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Goddamn it, beat me to it.
Well played sir, well played.
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Sarah Palin an expert in geology and vulcanology (Score:5, Funny)
Given her foreign policy credentials, are the Republican talking heads going to advance this event as proof of her experience with geology and vulconalogy?
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Score 2, Flamebait? Boy is someone still sore about the election.
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Wow, is that the best the dittoheads can come up with? I think Rush was much more comical and insightful on drugs.
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Let's work to avoid another "Katrina" (Score:5, Insightful)
My prayer to all those concerned is to work hard in order to avoid another "Katrina." Just like Katrina, we know this natural disaster is probably coming, like Katrina, we know its likely to be big and therefore affect many folks.
So let us prepare and not screw up everything. Events that transpired during and after Katrina were no less than events that would have transpired in a 3rd world country. Now that's shameful and we should avoid it.
Re:Let's work to avoid another "Katrina" (Score:5, Informative)
The entire state of Alaska has around 680,000 people.
So while this has the potential to be a major disaster, it will never be anything as bad as Katrina in scale and number of people affected.
Re:Let's work to avoid another "Katrina" (Score:5, Funny)
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It's also known as "self-sufficiency", and it works a lot better than "government dependence", which was what was expected by too many people after Hurricane Katrina.
Re:Let's work to avoid another "Katrina" (Score:4, Insightful)
It's also known as "self-sufficiency", and it works a lot better than "government dependence", which was what was expected by too many people after Hurricane Katrina.
LOL,
that's why Alaska is the queen of the welfare states. How about you start being a little bit self-sufficient and stop taking 2 dollars from me for every dollar you pay in taxes ya god damned welfare leech.
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Re:Let's work to avoid another "Katrina" (Score:4, Informative)
In comparison, my impression is that most of the Anchorage metro area is at risk from a tsunami.
Negative. I've never seen it actually documented (or else I'd provide a link), but the urban legend (at least) in Anchorage is that Cook Inlet isn't conducive to tsunamis reaching the Anchorage area. Most of the water near Anchorage is pretty shallow, which you can verify for yourself by looking at Cook Inlet, Knik Arm and Turnagain Arm at low tide -- especially this time of year, when the glacial-fed rivers that empty into Knik and Turnagain arms are just barely trickling. Therefore, most of the energy of a tsunami would be dissipated before reaching Anchorage. Also, Anchorage sits on a ~100 foot high bluff. The airport elevation at Merrill Field is ~130 feet above sea level. While there are parts of Anchorage that are lower (the port and some of the area near the Coastal Trail), I suspect it would take a really large wall of water (which I already showed isn't likely) to flood most of Anchorage.
Re:Let's work to avoid another "Katrina" (Score:4, Interesting)
I have to admit I'm a bit torn by this sentiment. On the one hand, yes, this is shaping up to be rather tragic. On the other, isn't this sort of thing rather avoidable by just not living there?
To be fair, Katrina (specifically as it pertains to New Orleans) is only about 50/50 on the whole 'just dont live there' thing for me - hurricanes can hit the entire coast, but perhaps you should consider allowing the below-sea-level areas to flood at some point. Or fill it in somehow, or use a system of tubes, or stilts, or whatever engineering marvel amounts to a better idea than 'build a wall and pray'. It isn't like water is some kind of super-intelligent villain. It just sort of flows downhill until it hits the ocean...
This Alaskan situation, on the other hand, is a volcano. It doesn't move around much. It also erupts in a fairly predicable way, and makes a lot of noise letting you know its about to happen.
It just reminds me of the security guard on Austin Powers, I guess.
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No. There are not enough safe areas on Earth to hold all or even the majority of the population, and even those are safe only in relation to some other area. Add the facts that the tighter you pack humans, the easier it is for plagues and such to spread, the more dependent on infrastructure they become, and the more
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it becomes obvious that "don't live in a dangerous area" is not viable advice
Perhaps. It could be modified a bit, however, could it not?
Perhaps "if you live in a dangerous area, be prepared to periodically evacuate and rebuild"?
Or "live in the least dangerous area possible"?
I do fundamentally disagree, however, that Alaska has become populated through necessity. There are still vast tracts of land in the lower-48 that are uninhabited. Look also at New Orleans after Katrina. The relief efforts somehow managed to find a place to park trailers that was above the water line. I saw
Re:Let's work to avoid another "Katrina" (Score:4, Insightful)
No. There are not enough safe areas on Earth to hold all or even the majority of the population
Sure there are. They're just not generally close enough to the trendy seashores for most people's tastes.
Today, people are actually packed tightest into the relatively small high risk areas because they have the most attractive geological features and climate.
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While that is true in general, living below sea level in an area surrounded by a big wall is really, really stupid.
I'm not actually saying that people should have necessarily moved out of New Orleans before Katrina. No, the really stupid thing was people moving back to the undersea city. The only thing worse is people building houses on unstable hills in California, and there the damage is very limited in the scope of its effects on the population of the area. Massive hurricanes hit populated areas way more
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Well, one million Neapolitans haven't figured that out yet.
Re:Let's work to avoid another "Katrina" (Score:4, Insightful)
1) the People in he nearby cities are preparing for it. Buying emergencies suppies, food, flashlights,etc.
2) The mayors in nearby cities are informing the people, have emergency procedures already in place and plan to follow them.
3) the governor is working with the mayors, has plans aready in place for when emergencies happen, and is prepared to activate emergency personnel as needed.
Re:Let's work to avoid another "Katrina" (Score:5, Funny)
4) Michael "heck of a job" Brown no longer at FEMA
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Ok... you know what.. stop beating the horse, because its dead.
Lay the blame on Ray 'Chocolate Town' Nagin and Governor Blanco. They waited less than 24 hours for a mandatory evacuation. How many city and school buses could have been used to get those out of the affected area if the evacuation would have been called at the proper time 48+ hours before? Instead the sit there and the city floods. The media, already with an intense hatred of Bush, lays blame on him. Reality is, FEMA was there
"New Orleans's eme
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The fun thing about disasters is that they come fairly randomly. Cities have been hit as hard as New Orleans was several times during our history, and many more times than that around the world. It's been just long enough in between for people to forget how to handle the things.
Re:Let's work to avoid another "Katrina" (Score:5, Insightful)
"Just like Katrina, we know this natural disaster is probably coming, like Katrina, we know its likely to be big and therefore affect many folks."
And just like Katrina, anyone too stupid to look after their own behinds and expect the government to come save them is an idiot who probably is due for a Darwinistic culling.
Be intelligent. Prepare yourself. Evacuate as YOUR judgement suggests is reasonable, and understand that the consequences for being wrong could be severe, so you might want to err on the side of caution.
What shamed me as an American during Katrina wasn't the much-publicized "failure" of Bush and co. No, what disgusted me was that in a society with free public education to age 18, widespread information-distribution technology, and AMPLE transportation resources, we have apparently bred a new generation of sheep, er, Americans with no interest in helping their fellow-man, so dependent and with so little motivation that even self-preservation can't get them to lift a finger in their own interest.
That's what a "government" is for (Score:4, Interesting)
Sad to break this to you, but humans usually _organize_ for this kind of thing, so it doesn't become a matter of individual people helping individual people. There are a lot of things which just don't scale if done that way.
E.g.,
- It's more efficient and a better use of everyone's resources to have a tiny fraction of the population as cops, than to have each person stand guard with a shotgun on their own property 27/7. The former lets you actually, say, go to work and leave that home unattended.
- It's more efficient to have a few doctors, than have everyone learn to treat their own wounds and illnesses,
- It's more efficient to have an insurance spread the risk and cost, than have everyone save for the freak case that an airplane falls on their roof, they run their car into a tree, _and_ get a MRSA infection in the resulting fractures
- It's more efficient to have some consumer laws and organizations, than have everyone spend countless hours and effort running the EULA for every single pencil, second-hand car, and party hat by a lawyer to be sure they haven't sold their firstborn into slavery in clause 255 on page 100 of the small print,
Etc.
Just like making shoes for a hundred million people ends up cheaper and more efficient that each of those people each raising their own pig/cow/whatever, personally tanning its hide, and sewing their own shoes.
People organize so a centralized group can do some things cheaper and more efficient than in an every-man-for-himself world. _That's why we have governments (local, federal, whatever), agencies like the FEMA, etc. That's their job.
And the fact that you're so quick to dismiss their responsibility and blame it on the victims... well, maybe _that_ idiocy is proof of what's wrong with education.
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That is all well and good, but what do you do when the police don't show up for work and the hospital is flooded out? When it comes to preparing for disasters, you need more self reliance than under normal circumstances because the authorities will have their hands full with recovery efforts.
This is why you need to be able to feed yourself, defend yourself, and heal yourself and otherwise manage your own affairs until the situation returns to normal. If you are unprepared to do this, you leave yourself at t
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One of the reasons the society - whose coordination center the government is - exists in the first place is to assist people in emergencies. It is hardly unreasonable to expect it to do its job.
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Hmmm, it could very well be another Katrina event. First, Anchorage at 280,000 people is about half the size of New Orleans at the time it was devastated by Katrina. Second, a considerable portion of Anchorage is on high ground (I see parts of it are hundreds of feet above sea level) so it probably won't get completely wiped by a tsunami. So similar physical damage though loss of life would be much higher.
For any Anchorage people out there, here's my take. You're at the end of a huge fjord and downhill from
Server Unresponsive (Score:2)
The server's unresponsive, but damn it we're still going to link to it. If it had any chance at all to recover, we're going to make sure it stays down for the count. What did the machine do to piss off the slashdot editor?
Things like this... (Score:2)
...remind me to call my mom, kiss my wife, and hug my kids. If this volcano blows, people in Alaska are going to have a really bad time. Additionally if the big one under the Rockies goes up (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellowstone_caldera), we're ALL going to die.
And its overdue. And it is moving. Yeah!
To be fair, no respectable person seems to think it is going to happen any time soon, but it still serves as a gentle reminder of how fragile everything we hold dear truly is...
Yellowstone (Score:4, Interesting)
The biggest problem with the Yellowstone supervolcano would be the large amounts of ash ejected REALLY high into the atmosphere and across large portions of the US as well due to the high pressure eruption.
The prudent thing would be to place tactical nuclear warheads in deep wells around the entire perimeter of the magma chamber, and if it begins erupting, to crack the whole top at once. The area around Yellowstone will be destroyed, but the outlet for the pressure will be so large, far less ash is going to be ejected far lower in the atmosphere. We may even be able to avoid a massive drop in global temperatures, and crop failures that would otherwise kill a billion people.
P.S. Had to post as Anon as I moderated some totally unrelated posts.
Meuge
OBLG: BSG (Score:4, Funny)
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And then you find out, it really doesn't... but you still watch because in some ways, it's still entertaining.
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It'll suck when Yellowstone blows. Pretty much everyone in Montana, Idaho, the western half of Washington and Oregon, North East Nevada, Wyoming, and North West Colorado is dead inside a week just from the dust cloud. Let's not forget to mention the people within the rather large blast zone that will die during the eruption itself. 7 months or so down the way, the world is in volcanic winter and the average temperature drops about 15 degrees Celsius.
Even better, the overdue earthquake in the Cascadia Sub
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The likely global war over food or alternative collapse of society help the story I'm writing, but are kind of bleak potential futures we have waiting for us soon.
That's kind of how I see it playing out for us as well. Without the Midwest as a viable source of food for several decades, North America will probably go to war.
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It will "suck when Yellowstone blows" in the same way that it will suck if an asteroid a couple of hundred meters in diameter hits Earth. The Lost Creek eruption of ~630K years ago put about a half meter of so of ash over about 2/3rds of what is now the US. Reference and maps here [uwec.edu]
Sitting here in Anchorage right now 'preparing' (Score:3, Informative)
Eruption Theme Song (Score:2)
At least you will have a theme song [asklyrics.com] to play during the eruption.
Overloaded and unresponsive (Score:2)
Nice way to empathize, /. submitter.
AVO already overloaded, now Slashdot!? (Score:2)
"The server for the Alaska Volcano Observatory appears to be overloaded and is unresponsive."
And so then you felt the best thing to do was to link to it from /.? This is a public safety resource that probably doesn't need the extra traffic right now.
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Unnecesary link (Score:5, Insightful)
This is not Microsoft website in the day of the "slammer", this is a public service in an emergency, I think it would be wise to remove the link.
abrasive particulate -- moon dust testing? (Score:2)
Hrm. If it is possible to collect the particulate and magnetize it, it could be useful for testing future moon equipment.
-l
One chance to stop the eruption! (Score:3, Funny)
Re:One chance to stop the eruption! (Score:4, Funny)
In other seismic news,.. (Score:2)
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The googles, they do nothing! [google.com] = 239,000 results.
The goggles do nothing [google.com] = 325,000 results.
I think that it qualifies to be called a internet meme.
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Does this mean Milhouse is a meme???
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They were not perpared.
Re:Damn globe (Score:5, Funny)
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It's more like the underground Molemen are pissed off
Crab people. Crab people. Taste like crab, talk like people. Crab people. Crab people.......
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Actually I'd love to see a comparison of supposed man made climate changing gasses verses natural. Do you know there is a lake in Rawanda that contains enough gases to end live as we no it if it turns over, ya the planet is trying to kill us!
Re:Damn globe (Score:4, Interesting)
Human activity typically puts out some 130 times [usgs.gov] more carbon dioxide than all the world's volcanoes combined. Neither come close to the amount of carbon dioxide emitted by rotting foliage in the autumn - but that is cancelled out by the carbon dioxide absorbed by growing foliage in the spring. That's why the concentration in the atmosphere [noaa.gov] oscillates up and down, but maintains a continuous upward trend.
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Re:Think of the Airlines as Well. (Score:4, Funny)
I wonder what kind of plans or route diversions they are making for military and commercial flights right now?
The particulate has jagged edges and has been used as an industrial abrasive. 'They use this to polish all kinds of metals,'
So I'm guessing American Airlines will be routing their whole fleet right over it for a free polish!