Chasing a Mountain of Trouble
If tornadoes were last year's media obsession, this year's is the volcano. Three will erupt on screen this year: Dante's Peak, which just opened in theaters; ABC's Volcano: Fire on the Mountain, which airs this month; and Volcano, a thriller premiering this summer or fall.
In real life, 50 or so volcanoes erupt each year--usually with warning. Before they blow, they shake, swell, and belch gases. Developing countries rarely have equipment that can warn of trouble, so at the first sign of an eruption, they call the Volcano Disaster Assistance Program--a scientific SWAT team that predicts when and how violent the eruption will be. VDAP was created a decade ago after 23,000 Colombians were killed by an eruption that could have been predicted.
The VDAP volcanologists--the models for Pierce Brosnan's character in Dante's Peak--race from their Vancouver, Wash., base to hot spots worldwide. Once there, they dot the volcano with seismometers to track quakes and tiltmeters to detect bulges in the earth. They check the ground for volcanic gases and signs of past eruptions.
Predicting eruptions is a high-stakes game. React like Chicken Little and residents might panic needlessly. But miss a telltale warning and lives could be lost, including the volcanologists' own. "We're not cowboys," says C. Dan Miller, VDAP's chief. "None of us has a death wish."
This story appears in the February 17, 1997 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.
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