Lux Americana

If you’re into “something called ‘volcano monitoring’,” it’s been a pretty interesting week.

A massive undersea volcano spewed thousands of feet into the air, creating a new island off the coast of Tonga in the Pacific “ring of fire,”  and leaving “no living thing left” on another tiny nearby island, via its two vents.

Here in the U.S., the Alaska Volcano Observatory and U.S. Geological Survey increased the threat level of the Mt. Redoubt volcano to orange, indicating “heightened or escalating unrest with increased potential of eruption,” and threatening to be a repeat of the sort of natural disaster suffered by Americans in the Pacific Northwest when Mt. St. Helens blew in 1980.  That eruption cost 57 lives (including a geologist who was monitoring the mountain) and an estimated $2.74 billion.

According to John Eichelberger, program coordinator for the USGS’s Volcano Hazards Program, effective monitoring of Mt. Redoubt’s escalating threat level has been difficult due to a lack of funds for a GPS network.

Unfortunately, Redoubt is not the exception to the rule.  Of the 65 historically active volcanoes in the United States, 18 are considered a “very high threat” with another 18 a “high threat” as ranked by the Geological Survey.  A 2005 report found that approximately 60% of these high- and very high-threat volcanoes do not have real-time ground-based monitoring.

Louisiana Governor Piyush “Bobby” Jindal criticized President Obama’s stimulus package last month over “$140 million for something called ‘volcano monitoring,’” ignoring (or ignorant) of the very real threat posed to millions of Americans living in the shadow of some of these active volcanoes.

After the billions of dollars and dozens of lives lost in 1980, this seems a trifle to pay for increasing our ability to predict such cataclysmic events.  However, and perhaps this shouldn’t come as a surprise given Jindal’s record, he was either ignorant or deceptive with his numbers – only about $15 million of the $140 million earmarked to the USGS would be spent on volcanic monitoring projects.  Much of the rest of the money would go towards monitoring of earthquakes, floods, landslides, tsunamis, wildfires and hurricanes – yes, Mr. Jindal, hurricanes in your state – and gathering scientific data to reduce the cost of natural disasters.

More at The Week Magazine, including details on the “overdue” volcano at Yellowstone that punched a hole the size of Connecticut in the Earth’s crust and threw ash as far as Louisiana the last time it erupted.

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