European Stars and Stripes (Newspaper) - June 22, 1977, Darmstadt, Hesse Volonino in Hawaii by John Noble Wilford new York times he Summit and slopes of the Mountain Are swelling slightly but menacingly. Deep underfoot unseen but not undetected molten Rock churns with heal and gather ing pressure. It seeps through subterranean crevices probing with All its pent up might for a Way out. These Are the ominous signs scientists say that the world s largest Active Volca no Mauna Loa in the Hawaii volcanoes National Park is building up or an eruption. Based on the Volcano s past behaviour and the rumblings that Register on the seismographs daily sometimes every few minutes scientists at the United states geological Survey s hawaiian Volcano Observatory Are predicting that Mauna Loa should a Loose a major Row of lava any time Between now and july 1978they first made the prediction More than a year ago and have seen nothing indecent Days to change their minds. If the scientists Are right a River of devastating lava would probably flow to the direction of hello a City of 35,000people about 30 Miles from the Summit. Several limes in recorded history lava has reached what Arenow the City s outskirts. Indeed the entire Island the state s big Island Olha Waii is the creation of volcanoes that Rise from the floor of the sea. If the scientists arc wrong and Maunaloa contains itself through july 1978, it would be no cause for relaxation Only confirmation once again of the fall ability of those who venture predictions about Earth s More violent tendencies. Gordon p Eaton the 48-year-old head of the Observatory is the first to concede that predictive Volcano try is far from a pre Cise science. We Don t have a theoretical Model he said. We arc More like social scientists. They Sec that people Usu ally behave in a certain Way and make predictions accordingly but sometimes people act differently. That s the Way it Isth studying and predicting yet or. Eaton and the 16 scientists an technicians who live in the Shadow of Mauna Loa Elevation 13.700 feet and work at the Observatory on the rim of another Volcano. Kilauea Elevation 4.000 feet be Lieve that by making a great outdoor Laboratory of the two volcanoes they Are improving the Odds in eruption predictions. They have implanted 43 seismometers m the area the densest such network in the world. They have 83 tilt meter stations in operation sensitive to the slightest swelling or subsidence of the volcanic slopes. With laser instruments they periodically measure precisely surveyed lines to see if there has been any expansion or contraction particularly in the rift zones from which lava so often erupts and they frequently remap the Gravity and magnetic Fields for signs of changes in the internal Structure of the volcanoes aside from providing clues to impending eruptions such a comprehensive and systematic monitoring of the hawaiian volcanoes is expected Todd to the general knowledge of Volca noes. The geological Survey Hopes to adapt the monitoring methods developed i Hawaii for use in the nation s other volcanic regions in Alaska and in the Casc derange of California Oregon and washing ton. This i what Thomas a. Jaggar had in mind when he founded the Observatory in 1912. The Massachusetts Institute of technology geology professor had studied vol canoes in Italy Japan and Costa Rica and thought there should be a permanent Observatory. The Observatory situated in the National Park is a modest Complex of Low Metal buildings. Prom the windows or. Eaton can look out on the Broad Crater of i Lauca. An awesome sight that in 186$ moved Mark Twain to write Here was yawning pit upon whose floor the armies of Russia could Camp and have room Kilauea appeared Serene. Some wisps of steam poured out of vents but there were no pools of fresh lava. But for the inside Story or. Eaton looked to the five drum seismographs standing near the window rotating slowly leaving squiggly traces or to the Bank of computers in the next room. The computers receive digest and store the radioed signals from All the Observatory s seismic network. In the earlier Days the observation were mostly visual or. Eaton said. But now we re so instrumented that we could function very Well without being in View of the the night before or. Eaton noted i checking the seismographs a shallow harmonic tremor caused the ground to shake for about 20 minutes. If it had been a real Shaker alarms would have gone off inthe Homes of or. Eaton and several other scientists. We be had a number of tremors like that or. Eaton explained. It Means that magma molten Rock ism Vii somewhere Down there Mauna Loa had an eruption in july 1975 and Man tremors before and after. Kilauea had a 7.2 Richter scale earthquake in november1975. That so broke up the internal Struc Ture of the Volcano that it is still in the pro Cess of re consolidating and every Day the scientists and technicians trek out Over their unstable Ter rain installing or checking instruments and surveying for signs of movement. John Forbes goes Early each morning Toa vault built into the Side of Kilauea 3 outer slope. Recently he took a visitor through triple doors into an inner Sanctum of seismology where he changed the film for one of the key seismometers in the on Kau desert a volcanic waste land Southwest of the Kilauea pointed to some of the newest Rock on Earth. This is where the lava flows every few years most recently in 1971 and 1974, killing off nearly everything and Leav ing a smooth Lustrous Sheet of cooled lava called is cracked Here and there like City Asphalt and Fern takes Root in some of he cracks. It crunches underfoot like Styro foam and often , when the wind shifts the air becomes acrid As Mark Twain had observed. The smell of Fulfur is he wrote but not unpleasant to a on the floor of a smaller Crater Kilau Catkin engineers from Sandia laboratories in Albuquerque were testing the reliability of geophysical sensing devices in detecting buried molten Rock. These could be useful in finding deposits of magma elsewhere in the world that could be new sources of Energy. Scientists Are hoping to convert the magma heat to electricity As they can do with geothermal steam no one wants to Drill Tor magma until he is sure it is there. Since it is Al ready known that at Kilauea Dei a 100-foot. Deep Pool of molten Rock lies Iso feet under the Crater floor the Crater has become calibrating Standard for testing the accuracy of detection instruments. If seismic or electric probes correctly spot the magma chamber there they should be Able to do so elsewhere. The Observatory s most immediate concern however has to do with eruption forecasting. And when a eruption Alert is sounded All Mem Bers of the staff Spring to action. The want to be ready to photograph the eruption observe flow direction Sample lava and gases and measure changes in the terrain. There was a burst of seismic activity Back in february and one night it Loo Kedas if an eruption at Kilauea was imminent. Lennart Anderson one of the scientists re members it Well for that was the night be engaged in what he called some scat of the pants went into the area of the most pronounced shocks Anderson said if you stood there you did t feel a thing. So i sat Down on the Road. There were four of us sit Ting there on the pavement. We agree that All four of us had to feel something for it to be counted. It Felt like someone was operating a pile Driver off in the distance. We got so we could even get the direction drought has Cut flow from Lake Powell dam into the Colorado Vyver the Coican t parched p by Grace Uch Wenstel new York tires at he Western drought Lemark on the Region s Roost Awe creation the grand Canyon. The Colorado River whose i carved the Canyon sons ago a diced to a trickle through the National a. As a result thousands of people Hatto postpone popular White water raft Merciai outfitters have lost hundreds dollars in cancelled River excursions. A 100 vacationers have been stranded Gorge in the past few weeks whet became beached on rocks or Sand , grand Canyon s problem a Harbinger of similar problems tint action seekers throughout the West will i the drought has turned to of California to the Rockies into under West service the National Park i tale agencies Are already Matt of 01 notice. Item have mapjcon2nto shut Down Campf rounds and be entire wilderness area shoot Forest fires grow More severe. 1 discovering their favorite i Page 1 1 the stars and stripes wednesday
