Chaiten Special Report

From the desk of Editor Michael Knight. May 10 2008

In the documentary “Contact Has Begun,�?we looked at volcanoes as one of a number of imminent �?“abrupt�?- earth changes.

Dr Brooks Agnew presented a map of all the world’s volcanoes �?noted that volcanic activity was on the increase �?and now there is no doubt about it.

Imagine a cloud of volcanic ash stretching 1800 miles from where you live.

That’s the extent of the “vog�?(volcanic fog) that has spread from coast to coast of South America from the eruption of the Chaiten volcano in Chile.

It has traveled from the Pacific to the Atlantic �?and overland from Chaiten to Buenos Aries in Argentina.

Buenos Aries and its surrounding urban areas houses 11 million people. Above their heads right now, 2000 meters aloft, that toxic cloud is gradually moving toward Uruguay. (NASA image right)

I have just got off the phone to ECR subscriber Kristen Neiling in Buenos Aries. She too publishes an earth changes newsletter �?the only one on the subject available in Spanish.

Kristen tells me the pharmacies there have completely run out of filter masks; American airlines have quite flying to that city; internal flights are disrupted because of the closure of various provincial airports; and in fact, Argentina and Argentineans are feeling the effects of this eruption far more than the people in Chile.

And it’s not over yet.

The Chaiten volcano started a new phase of heightened activity overnight, leading one scientist to suggest we may be facing a “new Pompeii.�?

(That was the eruption of Mt Vesuvius in Italy in 79AD that completely wiped out the city of Pompeii, burying its inhabitants in dust, gravel and ash).

Because Chaiten sits alongside a fjord on Chile’s Pacific Coast �?and because it is a massive caldera type if volcano with a crater up to 3 1/2 kilometers (approx two miles) across, concern has also been expressed that there’s the possibility of a tsunami being triggered as well if the eruptions become more violent.

Tsunamis travel at hundreds if not thousands of miles an hour. A tsunami originating in Chile would have 5000 miles to cover before hitting New Zealand’s east coast.

Perhaps that’s far enough to minimize damage. But in between are many of the low-lying islands of Polynesia. Depending on the way in which a tsunami might fan out, it could strike from Easter Island through French Polynesia and Samoa then New Zealand and Fiji, then Vanuatu and on to the shores of Australia.

[Update 0118 May 12: Kristen advises me that past tsunamis which originated in that area have mostly traveled north-westerly across the Pacific, hitting Hawaii and as far as Japan. But it's also recorded in New Zealand Maori history that great tsunamis have devastated Easter Island and other regions of the Polynesian Pacific - MK].

Adding further uncertainty to what’s coming, Kristen says a second nearby volcano - Volcán Michimauida �?has also started erupting. (This one is not a caldera, and it’s possible that it will act as a pressure relief valve for Chaiten �?but that is speculation. Only time will tell which way things go in terms of increased volcanic activity �?or not, and a tsunami, or not �?MK).

Future possibilities aside, things in the air and on the ground are disastrous, and getting worse.

The mainstream media is helping government officials by underplaying the severity of the situation.

The focus is on the fact that 4000 people have been safely evacuated, and the Chilean government is taking action to help those who’ve been forced to move.

But right across the border in Argentina, the ash cloud has already crippled tourism in several provinces, laid down an increasing layer of toxic crud, and forced hundreds if not thousands of people to try and flee from the falling ash.

It has already blanketed who knows how many millions of acres. And who knows how many animals, domestic and native, are dying?

It may be years, if not decades, before the worst-affected areas recover. If ever.

Flora and fauna are dead or dying under the ash �?and it could get worse if the weather changes and acid rain starts to fall.

Says Kristen: “Government officials are saying ‘we have it all under control, people should remain calm�?those stupid sort of things instead of putting people into safe places.”___________________________________

Sidebar: That may be so �?but as you know, I take the position that it is our responsibility to heed advance warnings rather than put ourselves at the mercy of some predictable disaster then expect the government to help us out. What we saw in the United States after Hurricane Katrina, and what’s happening right now in Myanmar prove the point. In both cases, government response has been too little, too late. (In Myanmar, the government is refusing to allow foreign aid workers in to do relief work after Cyclone Nargis killed tens of thousands and left millions homeless). Governments are not to be relied on.

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As Kristen says, despite the fact that some people believe disasters happen by chance or accident, the fact is that Nature does give advance warnings. So do scientists.

Fourteen years ago 75-year-old Professor Óscar González-Ferrer of the Universidad de Chile wrote “The Atlas of the Chilean Volcanoes,�?in which he said as a caldera, Chaitien had no ice and the dome could explode at any time.

Asked by the media this week if his warnings were taken into account he said “of course not.�?/P>

That’s to be expected. It happens all over the world. Politicians hate to let the facts spoil a good campaign for votes�?votes they want from people who have the same syndrome…ignoring the facts is a universal human ailment.

Leaving that fact aside �?Nature itself gives her own warnings, well in advance of such events.

Kristen wrote a newsletter in June last year in which she reported that one of the many lakes around Chaiten volcano literally disappeared overnight. The same thing happened in February this year.

“I was writing newsletters and saying this is not something to take lightly �?two lakes vanished in half a year.�?/P>

And during the last 12 months, in the city of Ayssen in Chile (in the Chaiten region), a volcano began to form in the middle of the city.

“There is no chance in what happens,�?says Kristen. “It’s not that Nature catches you without warning. Always there’s a warning, even when a marriage breaks. Warnings come months or years before. Do we take it into account?�?/P>

Taken together, these three warnings should have been enough for both politicians and citizens alike to wake up to the fact that some sort of major eruption was imminent. But what did the politicians do? They sent psychiatrists �?that’s right, shrinks - to Ayssen to calm the people down. (“Stay calm, There’s a volcano growing in the middle of your city. Nothing to worry about at all. Stay put. It’ll be fine. We’ve got it under control�?�?.

How far can this eruption of Chaiten and Michimauida go?

“No-one knows,�?says Kristen. “We only know it is non stop throwing out gas ash stones and pyroclasts. Water is already at ph9 so it’s impossible to drink. The countryside is covered in ash.�?/P>

And she says up to 15 million people from Chile to Buenos Aries are under that ash cloud, a smog of poisonous fumes that can increase blood fluorine levels very rapidly �?and death results.

She likens the situation to something that happened in the Pennsylvania town of Donora in 1948. A temperature inversion, coupled with toxic fumes such as sulfur dioxide, soluble sulphants, and fluorides from local factories generated a toxic smog that killed 19 people and “left hundreds more sick and dying. The whole thing was covered up, but had it lasted one more night, many more people would have died. What happened in Donora is happening here as well�?/P>

(It took the best part of another 30 years for Pennsylvania to enact remedial legislation. But you can’t legislate against volcanic activity).

At present, much of the poisonous gas from Chaiten remains in the atmosphere, but a weather change could bring it down and without gas masks those who breathe it in could be in mortal danger.

“And when the ash gets thick and hard what are all these people going to do? Where are they going to live?

“I think Patagonia will be a place were no one will be able to live anymore for some time.�?/P>