For the tourists exploring New Zealand’s White Island volcano on the afternoon of December 9, it was as if a bomb went off.
That day, at 14:11 local time, a pressure cooker of superheated water, confined just beneath the surface, cracked open. In a flash, the water would have explosively vaporised into steam, its volume expanding by 1,700 times. Life-threatening debris was jettisoned at incredible speeds from the blast, but the violence of the short-lived paroxysms alone were sufficient to claim at least eight lives and critically injure many more.
Since then, the volcano has remained restless, potentially gearing up for another eruption. And on Friday, the authorities, unable to resist the anguish of the victims’ families, made a daring attempt to recover the bodies that remained on the island, putting their own lives in danger. At the time of writing, six bodies had been recovered from the scorched earth of White Island.
This gut-wrenching saga has led many to ask a perfectly understandable question: how could such a dangerous volcano have ever become a tourist destination? By extension, you could ask how any of the world’s 1,500 active volcanoes, many of which are open to visitors, could ever be left accessible to the public.
Determining the merits of volcano tourism involves a web of interconnected threads, including the manner in which risks are communicated to the public, and the occasionally diverging priorities between the tourism industry and volcanologists. Crucially, though, tourism is permitted at volcanoes all over the world, including at White Island, because they are not as dangerous as you may think.
Much like plane crashes, deadly volcanic eruptions are infrequent enough that they remain shocking when they occur. No matter what efforts are taken to keep people safe, whether they are doing an everyday task or venturing into the heart of a volcano, people just get unlucky from time to time.
White Island, also known by as Whakaari in the Māori language, is the tip of a submarine volcano. It is a tourism draw because it is famously hyperactive: a submerged, active vent at the centre of this diminutive rocky citadel often bubbles about, volcanic gases gush out of holes, and – every now and then – the vent explodes, sometimes more exuberantly than others.
If the volcano is well monitored, some eruptions can signal their arrival beforehand. Unfortunately, the steam-driven series of explosions that took place at White Island on December 9 are, for now, unforeseeable. Phreatic events, as they are technically known, “are virtually unpredictable,” says Boris Behncke, a volcanologist at the Etna Observatory at Italy’s National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology.
With this level of unpredictability and uncertainty, it is inevitable that people visiting active volcanoes will sometimes die. Despite this, few scientists would suggest that volcanoes should be off-limits.
“It’s really cool just to see what the Earth can do and learn more about this planet we live on,” says Brian Terbush, the earthquake and volcano program coordinator at Washington State Emergency Management Division.
It’s not all about tourism. Around 800 million people than live within 100 kilometres of an active volcano, says Janine Krippner, a volcanologist at the Smithsonian Institution’s Global Volcanism Program. Ten per cent of the world’s active volcanoes can be found within the United States, including Hawaii’s Kīlauea volcano, which last year engaged in a game-changing eruption. Despite the occasional dangerous convulsion, residents and visitors would agree that volcanoes bring far more social, economic, spiritual, adventurous and purely aesthetic benefits to the table.
On a visceral level, says Terbush, it isn’t hard to see why volcanoes have been revered for tens of millennia. “It’s because they’re powerful – and unpredictable, for sure.” That, however, doesn’t mean that they are inherently dangerous.
A recent study estimated that, between 1500 and 2017, volcanic activity was responsible for 278,368 deaths. That sounds like a lot, but according to the World Health Organization, more than 1.25 million people die each year as a result of road traffic crashes. You are magnitudes more likely to die driving to work than you ever will be visiting a volcano, but car crashes rarely make headlines because they are so commonplace.
Fair enough, there is an element of control involved while driving; you have a chance to avert something terrible from happening. Volcanoes are their own masters, which may convince some that they remain unacceptably dangerous. But there is a lot more beyond our control than we are willing to actively think about.
Take Los Angeles and San Francisco: there is a 100 per cent chance that, one day, both cities will be rocked by devastating earthquakes, perhaps within the next 30 years. And those living on the shores of the Pacific Northwest will one day watch as an apocalyptic tsunami drowns in, just as it did 300 years ago. Like those inexorable tsunamis and earthquakes, White Island was inevitably going to claim lives, as it has in the past; it was only a matter of unfortunate timing.
Close shaves are ten a penny. A similarly vicious eruptions happened at White Island in 2016, but it took place at night, when tourists weren’t around. A steam-driven blast at Italy’s mercurial Mount Etna in 2017 nearly killed a BBC film crew, but they managed to escape. This past summer, more magma-heavy explosion at the country’s Stromboli volcano killed one person, but it could have been much worse: a few hours later, and the tourists at the base of the volcano may have been at the summit, where there would have been “absolutely no chance of survival,” Behncke says. And during Kīlauea’s 2018 eruption, a tour boat got splintered by lava bombs but, amazingly, no-one died.
And then, when the timing works out for the worst, tragedies transpire. A steam-driven blast much like White Island’s happened at Japan’s Mount Ontake in 2014 while it was covered in climbers; 63 hikers perished. “You don’t expect these things to happen, but they can,” says Terbush. But they still remain less dangerous, overall, that driving on the highway.
Low probability though they may be, the risks of volcanic hazards need to be effectively communicated to the tourists paying them a visit. Often, this is done using alert levels.
In New Zealand, a numerical system – from zero to five – is used, with zero indicating no volcanic unrest, and a five indicating a major volcanic eruption is taking place. They describe what is happening at the volcano at that moment in time, and sometimes are accompanied by estimates as to how likely an eruption is going to happen in the near future. Although not numerical, the American system is somewhat similar.
They are not prophetic. An uptick in volcanic tremors, gas emissions and the appearance of geyser-like activity at White Island convinced scientists to increase the alert level to two – the highest alert level without an eruption taking place – a few weeks ago, but that did not guarantee that an eruption was forthcoming. In fact, an eruption can occur at any time, with any level of activity, but this can be misunderstood by tourists who pay heed to the changing numbers but not the fine print attached to them.
These well-meaning scales can also be perplexing in other ways, says Shane Cronin, a volcanologist and Earth scientist at the University of Auckland. At one point last week, White Island’s alert level dropped from a three (indicating a minor eruption was happening) to a two (indicating an elevated level of unrest). But at the same time, the seismicity had significantly risen, indicating something was still brewing below ground. Dropping the alert level, says Cronin, may have inadvertently given the public the wrong impression that things were calming down.
New Zealand’s volcano alert framework has been tweaked over time, but Cronin says it might be time to rethink it. He explains that he and his colleagues have spent a lot of time explaining how the alert system works, but many people still leave baffled. That suggests tourists may be finding it difficult to process their level of personal risk using it.
Deciding to visit a volcano should be a calculated risk, says Terbush. If tourists aren’t always getting the information necessary to make that calculation, then that is a problem. That is why current paradigms for how risk is currently conveyed by scientists should be open to change, says Michael Poland, the scientist-in-charge at Yellowstone Volcano Observatory.
After the 1980 cataclysm at the infamous Mount St. Helens, loggers wanted to extract all the timber from the forests that the volcano’s extensive pyroclastic flows knocked down. They wanted to know the odds of another eruption killing them, so the U.S. Geological Service initially gave some percentage probabilities. But those figures didn’t effectively communicate the risks well, says Poland. A more effective method was to frame the risk in more immediately relatable terms: comparing the odds of an eruption to being struck by lightning, winning the lottery or being injured in a car accident.
All volcanoes come with risks. “How we articulate that perhaps could be better done, in more human terms,” says Poland.
Self-education is also vital, says Krippner. Tourists should always take time to do a bit of background research on their volcanic destinations, and to pay attention to the latest updates from the associated scientific observatories.
But for a non-expert, says Cronin, somewhere like White Island will look similar to some of the geyser fields on New Zealand’s North Island. Judgement calls as to what is and isn’t dangerous may be made on this superficial basis, but in truth, the risk of something deadly happening at the latter is way lower. Even if tourists decide to do a more thorough round of research, the amount of information available online is often overwhelming and sometimes inaccurate.
Perhaps a more direct approach from those in the know would work best. One possibility, says Behncke, would be to show tourists videos of the possible volcanic hazards before the expedition begins. Regardless of how it is done, “people must be informed. That is the most important thing,” he says. “There will always be those that seek adventure, who want to touch the limits,” he adds, but visitors should always be able to make an informed decision.
The level to which this is made possible depends on who is in charge. Some volcanoes are in national parks, managed by the government. Others, including White Island, are privately owned. Each volcano will have its own safety standards.
Problems arise when the interests of tourism companies and local officials fail to align. For example, after that lethal explosion at Stromboli this summer, the authorities closed access to the volcano. Several mountain guides complained to the volcanologists, claiming they were ruining their business and remarking that a second blast never follows on from the first. Shortly after, says Behncke, the volcano was shaken by a second explosion, and the mountain guides promptly stopped complaining.
Even the most conservative safety measures can only do so much. Whether it is Stromboli or Etna, Kīlauea or White Island, the risks that tourists and tourist companies are willing to take will always vary. On the other hand, the driving goal of volcanologists – to keep people safe through their painstaking research – remains a comforting constant.
But volcanology is a youthful science. Clear warning signs for certain eruptions, like White Island’s, remain elusive. Some signals may eventually be identified, but others may never be unearthed.
It is a potentially Sisyphean quest that takes a heavy toll. Poland was one of many volcanologists at the annual gathering of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco, California last week. Ever since Monday’s disaster, he says, an overriding pall of frustration has befallen the community. “You can see it in every colleague you talk to. There’s sort of a heaviness here that there was a failure,” he says. But, he adds, this event encourages them to redouble their efforts to see a future with fewer White Island-like incidents.
“We’re not going to always keep everyone safe,” says Krippner. “But that’s what we’re going to keep aiming for.”
Updated 14.12.2019 15:50 GMT: The article was updated to correct the number of people who live within 100km of an active volcano. The number is 800 million, not 100 million
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
