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CHAPTER 1

VOLCANOES

· LAKE TOBA ·

One of the earliest disasters we know about was also probably the one that came closest to wiping out the human race. About 74,000 years ago, there was a huge volcanic eruption at what is now Lake Toba on the Indonesian island of Sumatra. According to some recently advanced theories, it reduced the earth's existing human population of about one million to just 10,000. The eruption was one of the biggest ever, perhaps twenty-eight times as powerful as Mount Tambora's in 1815 (see below), which was the fiercest of modern times. Vulcanologists think it went on for as long as ten days, but as so often happens with volcanoes, the deadliest effect came not from the eruption itself but from the enormous volume of ash flung into the atmosphere, and the effect it had on the weather. Today we worry about global warming, but Toba produced catastrophic global cooling, spewing out an estimated 670 cubic miles of rock that prevented the sun's rays getting through to the earth, and plunged the planet into a dark, six-year volcanic winter, with temperatures plunging by up to five degrees. There was also severe acid rain, and plants, animals and our human ancestors died all over the globe as the world was tipped into its last ice age. At one site in central India twenty feet of debris from Toba can still be detected today, while parts of Malaysia were covered to a depth of nearly thirty feet.

Lake Toba lies near a fault line that runs along the centre of Sumatra, one of the weak points in the earth's crust, and Indonesia remains probably the most volcanically active country on earth. The ancient eruption gouged out a huge crater which filled with water to create the lake, the biggest in Indonesia and one of the world's deepest. Fifty miles long, with cliffs up to 800 feet high, today it is a lovely, tranquil stretch of water, and one of the most beautiful features of Sumatra. Sediment from the eruption formed the picturesque island of Samosir in its centre, now a favourite holiday resort.

· SANTORINI ·

Another of today's tourist paradises is Santorini, a small ring of volcanic islands in the Aegean Sea about 125 miles from the Greek mainland, famous for the spectacular sunsets that can be seen across its circular bay. The bay is actually the rim of a crater, created by a catastrophic volcanic explosion about 3,500 years ago. In those days, Santorini was a single island, ten miles in diameter, rising nearly a mile high to a handsomely symmetrical mountain peak. Along with Crete, it formed one of the ancient world's greatest civilisations, dominating the eastern Mediterranean for a millennium and a half during the Bronze Age. The Minoans who lived there were a cultured and sophisticated people, who loved sculpture, paintings and jewellery, and had houses with hot and cold running water, toilets and bathrooms.

One dreadful day, their pleasant existence was rudely interrupted by an earthquake. Walls cracked and crumbled, houses collapsed. At this point, many may have departed, perhaps for the Greek mainland, but more likely for Crete, seventy miles away. Not everyone left, though, or perhaps some who did returned later, for there is evidence of paths being cleared and rubble neatly piled up. Someone had set up an improvised cooking hearth outside a ruined building; someone else had hauled a bathtub on to a roof to collect rainwater. We do not know exactly how long it was after the earthquake, but the reconstruction project would come to an abrupt end. The first suggestion that something was amiss was probably another series of tremors. At this point, did the Minoans take flight again? Certainly, there is some evidence that they did. When archaeologists discovered their houses, there were few signs of human remains, or of gold, silver or other valuables, while household utensils and supplies were found in basement storerooms.

For any who did stay, the outlook would have been bleak. A first eruption covered the island with a light fall of pumice, rather like snow. Next came bigger lumps of rock. Then the top of that handsome, symmetrical mountain burst open, and a pillar of smoke and ash rose more than twenty miles into the air, with a bang that could be heard from Central Africa to Scandinavia, and from the Persian Gulf to Gibraltar. The explosion produced a great crater into which the sea flowed, forming the bay that is such a distinctive feature of Santorini today, with its towering cliffs coloured black, grey, pink and rust, around a 1,300-foot-deep sea bed. Thirty-two cubic miles of the island went up in smoke, and a white-hot avalanche descended from the sky on anything left alive on Santorini, covering the island with pumice and debris to a depth of 100 feet. Any of its inhabitants who had taken refuge on Crete would also have been in grave danger as the eruption sent giant waves up to 300 feet high dashing against its coast. Great palaces like the one at Knossos suffered terrible damage. Homes were wrecked, ships sank, and the land was choked and poisoned by vast clouds of pumice and ash, slashing food production. Many believe this disaster marked the beginning of the end of the Minoan civilisation.

It was one of the most powerful eruptions of all time, perhaps second only to Mount Tambora (see below) during the last 5,000 years. For centuries, Santorini remained unoccupied, until the Phoenicians settled there in about 1200 BC, but the area is still volcanically active. Today Thera, the biggest island of the archipelago, has two smaller neighbours nestling in its eight-mile bay — Palea Kameni ('Old Burned') and Nea Kameni ('New Burned') — both created by undersea eruptions. It was only in 1966 that archaeologists uncovered, almost intact, an ancient city near the modern town of Akrotiri on Thera. Entombed in solidified volcanic ash, it was dubbed 'the Pompeii of the Aegean'. There were streets and squares, three-storey houses with stone staircases, sewerage and drainage systems and beautiful wall paintings, showing wonderfully vivid and natural scenes of monkeys, fish merchants, elegant ladies and children boxing. Some believe Santorini was the lost land of Atlantis, described by Plato as a 'great and marvellous power, which held sway over all the island and many other islands', until one day 'there occurred portentous earthquakes and floods' so that 'the island of Atlantis was swallowed up by the sea and vanished'. And could the column of ash created by the eruption be the 'pillar of cloud' the Bible says God sent to guide Moses and the Israelites out of Egypt? Certainly, it would have been visible from the Nile as it soared high into the atmosphere.

· POMPEII·

On Santorini, there is a well-preserved town frozen in time at the moment when disaster struck. But nobody knows for certain the fate of the inhabitants. Did they escape? If they did not, what did they think and feel as the cataclysm was about to engulf it? At Pompeii, there is another wonderfully preserved town on an even grander scale, but we also have a vivid account of how its people faced their doom.

By AD 79, a number of towns had sprung up around the base of Mount Vesuvius, thanks to the area's famously fertile soil. Few at the time seemed to suspect that the mountain was a volcano, even though it had actually erupted many times, once destroying a number of Bronze Age settlements. The area was also prone to earthquakes. One in AD 62 caused such widespread damage in Pompeii that seventeen years later it had not been completely repaired. But still the townsfolk refused to leave. Nor were they alarmed that the smoking caverns and volcanic steam geysers of the Phlegraean Fields, believed to be the doorway to Hades, were less than twenty miles from their homes. They were happy to go on harvesting the olives and fruit that grew in abundance on Vesuvius's slopes, while the brilliant sunshine tempered by cooling breezes tempted newcomers to build ever more opulent villas. The town boasted a 16,000-seat amphitheatre, magnificent public baths, and plush brothels and drinking houses.

The first signs of the disaster that was about to engulf them came in early August 79, when springs and wells started drying up. There were also reports of dogs, cats and livestock growing agitated. On 20 August, small earthquakes began shaking the ground. Pliny the Elder, Rome's greatest living expert on natural history, had arrived in the area a few weeks earlier to take command of the fleet stationed at Misenum, just over twenty miles from Vesuvius at the mouth of the Bay of Naples. Aged fifty-six, a little overweight and suffering from respiratory problems, he began 24 August in his usual way — an hour stretched out in the sun, followed by a quick plunge into cold water, then a hearty meal. He had just settled down to a few hours' reading when his sister burst in to say she had seen a huge, oddly shaped cloud in the sky to the northeast, and that it appeared to be going dark. His nephew, Pliny the Younger, then aged seventeen, would write that the cloud looked like 'a pine tree', shooting up to a great height and then spreading out at the top 'as though into branches'.

About midday, there was a roar like thunder as Vesuvius split open, belching out fire, ash, pumice and stones. Scientists now reckon that the eruption would have produced a column of smoke with a temperature of 850 degrees, soaring more than twenty miles into the sky. The explosion certainly would have set the ground shaking violently. A thick rain of ash fell, making the sun disappear and day turn to night. Pliny the Elder's reaction was just what his nephew would have expected: 'Like a true scholar, my uncle saw at once that it deserved closer study.' He decided to take a small flotilla out into the bay for a better view. The younger Pliny turned down an invitation to join him, saying he had to study. The boats set off eastwards across the bay and were soon being showered with thick clouds of hot cinders, while the admiral dictated his observations and comments to a scribe. As they tried to approach the shore, Pliny found the way blocked by pumice and rock from the eruption. The pilot urged him to turn back, but the admiral shouted, 'Fortune favours the brave!' and sailed on another three miles to Stabiae, where they landed. By now, many of the sailors were panicking, so, to try to calm them down, Pliny made a great show of taking a leisurely bath followed by a hearty dinner. The night, though, was even more terrifying than the day had been, with fearful booms and roars, and great sheets of fire flashing out of the mountain, while ash continued to fall.

By morning, the walls of the house in which they had taken refuge 'were swaying with repeated violent shocks and seemed to move in one direction and then another'. Here was an agonising dilemma — should the sailors remain inside, and risk having the building collapse on top of them, or should they run the gauntlet of choking fumes and falling stones to reach their ships? They chose escape, trying to protect their heads with pillows. There was an overpowering stench of sulphur and so much ash in the air that they needed torches to see where they were going. When they arrived at the beach, the tremors were making the sea churn so violently that it tossed their ships around like toys. Twice the admiral called for water. Then he collapsed. Had the poisonous gas exacerbated his breathing problems, or was it a heart attack induced by his exertions? Whatever the cause, he died, but his comrades managed to escape and would tell the full story to his nephew. At Misenum, the younger Pliny and his mother had passed a dreadful night. The tremors had become 'so violent that it seemed the world was not only being shaken, but turned upside down', and the younger Pliny saw 'the sea sucked back, apparently by an earthquake, and many creatures were left stranded on the sand'.

Eventually they managed to flee along the coast, away from the volcano. Behind them, they saw 'a horrible black cloud ripped by sudden bursts of fire, writhing snakelike, and parting to reveal great tongues of fire larger than lightning', while the day grew as dark as 'a sealed room without lights'. They were nearly overwhelmed by a growing throng of groaning, crying and shouting fugitives: 'some loudly sought their parents, others their children, others again their spouses ... many raised their arms to the gods, but still more said there were no more gods, and that this was the last night of the world'.

Pliny the Younger escaped to tell the tale, but many perished in Pompeii. Some must have been killed by direct hits from the eight-inch stones raining down on the town. Others would have been engulfed by the boiling mass of pumice and ash that coursed through the streets at sixty miles an hour. Others still were buried and suffocated in their own homes as ten-foot drifts of debris made their roofs collapse. The ash turned out to be an archaeologist's dream, forming a perfect mould of each corpse it encased, which was preserved even after the bodies themselves had decayed. Such was the detail that facial expressions and even the folds of clothes were clearly visible. Remains of about 1,150 bodies have been found around Pompeii, out of a population of perhaps 20,000, suggesting that many realised the danger and fled in time. And this may have been one of those rare disasters in which the poor were more likely to survive than the rich, because those with least possessions to worry about were most likely to run away first. Vesuvius's wrath, though, afflicted a wide area of the countryside, so simply leaving Pompeii itself may not have been enough, and the turbulent sea whipped up by the volcano must also have drowned many.

Even nearer to Vesuvius than Pompeii was the seaside resort of Herculaneum, which had a population of about 5,000. It was probably engulfed by red-hot lava within five minutes of the great explosion. Scores, perhaps hundreds, of people took refuge in the town's celebrated baths which opened out on to the sea, only to find great waves crashing in on them just as the steaming avalanche from the mountain poured through the doors and windows of the town's buildings, ripping giant columns from their bases like matchsticks. Some parts of Herculaneum were buried fifty feet deep, but while Pompeii was covered with pumice and ash that could be shovelled away, the seaside town was left under a cement-like topping that could be removed only by laborious drilling and chiselling, protecting it from the treasure hunters who got to Pompeii before the archaeologists. A group of seven adults, four children and a baby were found huddled in a corner; one woman still had jewelled rings on her fingers. There were still loaves in bakers' ovens and family tables laden with eggs, fruit, walnuts and vegetables. A sick boy lay in bed with a plate of chicken untouched beside him. It is an astonishing picture of a community at the moment when disaster overtook it. Stabiae, where the elder Pliny spent his last night, was also buried by the eruption.

Vesuvius went on to erupt many more times, though not since 1944 and never so destructively as during that terrible August of AD 79.

· ETNA ·

According to Greek legend, in a tale that may have been inspired by stories of the Santorini eruption (see above), Zeus once did battle with the great monster Typhon and 'the whole earth and firmament and sea boiled'. The myth ends with Zeus winning and imprisoning his adversary beneath Mount Etna on Sicily, only for Typhon to foment new volcanic mischief from his lair. Certainly, Etna has been one of the most active volcanoes in recorded history, erupting more than seventy times between 1500 BC and AD 1669. Its name comes from a Greek word meaning 'I burn'.

Etna stands nearly 11,000 feet high. One of the earliest descriptions we have of it comes from the Greek poet Pindar in 475 BC: 'The monster flings aloft the most fearsome fountains of fire, a marvel wondrous to behold or even to hear.' Seventy-nine years later, it was said to have halted the Carthaginian army then trying to conquer the island, while a particularly lethal outburst occurred in AD 1169, when 15,000 people were killed in the port of Catania alone.

The mountain's most violent known eruption, though, came precisely half a millennium later, in 1669. Etna had been spewing out stones and gas for weeks without causing any damage or injury. In March came an earthquake accompanied by what the Bishop of Catania called 'horrible roarings'. Then, three days later, there were 'three terrible eruptions'. Boulders shot into the air, and burning cinders and ash 'fell like a fiery rain'. The mountain had split open along a six-mile fissure. First in the firing line was the town of Nicolosi, though most of its inhabitants managed to escape. Before the end of the month two towns and several smaller settlements had been obliterated, and the mountain's thundering could be heard fifty miles away.

(Continues…)

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Excerpted from "Disaster!"
by .
Copyright © 2010 John Withington.
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