Page 10
News
Street Roots • Aug. 28-Sept. 3, 2015
Fretting Hie big one?
Andy Lockhart
stands in front of
Anatahan
Volcano in the
Mariana Islands
in 2005.
Lockhart, who
works with the
Volcano Disaster
Assistance
Program, has
worked on about
60 volcanoes in
13 countries,
including the US.
Generally,
Portlanders
need not fear
an eruption,
geophysicist
explains;
unlike
earthquakes,
volcanoes
‘broadcast
their
intentions'
P H O TO ÇDURTESY OF A N D Y L O C K H A R T
BY SUE ZALOKAR
Valley, that’s a whole different thing. And if
Downwind here is usually to the east. Oiice
STAFF W RITER v
you live up on Government Camp, then it’s
in a while, the wind will circle âroünd, and if
a long-term hazard, but not the same kind of there is an eruption going on, it’ll broadcast5
orking with the U.S. Geological
thing as an earthquake where you sort of
ash around. The level we see here in the
Survey might be the best work on
wait for it, wait for it, waitfor it, and thetì
Portland area sort of falls into the
the planet, says Andy Lockhart, a
f“nuisance”' category.
geophysicist who specializes in volcano here it is. With a volcano, in addition to
having a limited geographic scópe, they kind
As far as a hazard goes, if you or
monitoring, instrumentation and crisis
of
broadcast
their
intentions.
That’s
thè
big
somebody
already has a sérious rèspiratoiy
response. The work is useful and exciting,
difference.
problem, then it could be bad. Like being in
he says, and there’s a lot of travel and
So the hazards of a volcano
a bad dust storm. But it’s not a
interesting people.
T he s o rt o f
here in thè Cascades, these are
serious hazard the way the
That travel has involved 13 countries,
W
e
fre
@
wrdiaer
explosive
volcanoes,
like
St.
lahars
are. Lahars are limited
where Lockhart has worked on about 60
Helens. They’re not the
to the river valley, so for
i t s an
volcanoes. He has been at the Cascades
droolers like in Hawaii. We
example, around Mount Hood,
o th e r 100 years
Volcano Observatory since 1986, but he
sometimes get lava flow like in
down the Sandy River.
mostly works overseas with the Volcano
o a F f T he E a rth
Hawaii, but the more common
When the Lewis and Clark
Disaster Assistance Prograrh, a joint effort
Is a o t a m e tro -
thing is that they’ll blow up,
expedition came down the
of USAID’s Office of Foreign Disaster
aom e, I doa^t
they will build a dome, like S t
Columbia in their log canoes,
Assistance and the USGS. They work in
Helens
did
in
2004,
2006.
they
grounded on the sandbar
r
e
a
lly
th
la
h
o
f
developing countries to mitigate the effects
They’ll blow some ash around, these asr
coming out of the Sandy River,
of volcanic eruptions.
and then occasionally, they will h a d oaer n o w w a it and that was from Volcanic
collapse like St. Helens did in
lahar deposits from an eruption
Sue Zalokar: Your work sounds pretty
a c e rta la a m o u n t
1980.
that had happened a couple of
exciting. By exciting, I mean in a way that
o f tim e a n d an-
The hazard that we really
years before. We have pretty
also causes some universal anxiety in terms of
look for in the Cascades, more o th e r eite com es
abundant data that it happened
thinking about “the big one,” whether it's
a lo n g ? ?
than anything, unless you are
in the Sandy — a deep,
Mount Rainier erupting or the Cascadia
very close — like within a
.
subduction zone shifting and releasing
AeOV LOCKHART, canyonated river. There are
couple of kilometers, say a mile
USGS GEOPHYSiCSST people who live along the bank,
enormous amounts of pressure.
or so — is a lahar, the mudflow
but it’s not a big, broad, flat
and debris flow that comes down the rivers
river like the Puallyup or where people live
Andy Lockhart: It should cause concern.
from these volcanoes, like in 1980, what
all along the banks there.
Some people should be anxious about it.
Those would be people who are in charge or came down the Toutle River.
Those things can extend for many tens of
S.Z.: Tell me about the work that you do
have authority (in the community) to make
miles, all the way to the ocean. Like the
with the volcano assistance program.
changes in infrastructure.
Toutle River in 1980. Or in the case of
For the (average person), concern is the
Rainier, all the way down into
A.L.: The U.S. Geological Survey has
right level of involvement to have with an
Commencement Bay near Tacoma.
observatories in the United States. There’s
earthquake.
Those are areas where a lot of people
this one in the Cascades (in Vancouver,
With a volcano, it’s a much lesser
live.
Lahars have happened before; they’ll
Wash.), there’s one in Alaska, there’s one in
problem. There, the reach of a volcanic
happen again.
Hawaii, there is one for Northern California,
eruption is pretty well known and limited.
That is the main hazard in the Cascades
and then there’s one for Yellowstone. Here,
For example, those of us in Portland,
that
we
worry
about.
in the Cascade Volcano Observatory, we
Vancouver — we really have got nothing to
There is also the hazard of ash being
have the responsibility for looking over the
worry about (in terms of a volcano). We’re
blown
up.
Ash
is
basically
little
shards
of
volcanoes
in Oregon, Washington and Idaho.
good. I don’t lose any sleep at all over these
glass and sand-like particles. People who
We also have the Volcano Disaster
volcanoes.
were around in 1980 will know what that is
Assistance Program. That’s the program
Now, if you live up in the Puyallup River
all about. That stuff tends to blow downwind. that I work on. There are quite a few of us,
W
10 or so, that do this international work. We
work for the USGS, but our expenses ’
overseas and part of our salaries are paid by
the Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance,
which is under AID. Which of course is
foreign aid? So the Office of Foreign ;
Disaster Assistance^ their job is like When >
there is a hurricane or a typhoon or an
earthquake or there has been a disaster,
these are the people who go in With the
water supplies and shelter and food and
with water purification to save lives.
The idea came about in 1985. There was
a very small eruption at a volcano in
Colombia called Nevado del Ruiz. It was a
fairly small eruption, but it generated a lahar
that came down through a town a few hours
after the eruption and killed about 25,000
people. Everyone instantly saw that this had
been a terrible lack of communication and
lack of awareness. It was something that
could easily have been avoided. The U.S. ,
went down there and spent a lot of money
on the rescue,
They realized two things. One, it could
have been avoided by people getting down
there and doing work ahead of time. That
would have avoided a lot of deaths. If you’re
a cold-hearted, it would have saved the U.S.
a lot of money. No matter how you looked at
it, it seemed it would be a better idea to try
to get ahead of some of these things than to
respond to them,
Volcanoes, because they kind of broadcast
their intentions, they give you the
opportunity to get ahead of.itand prepare
populations and maybe get people out of the
way so that the results aren’t as tragic.
That has been the motivation for the
work that we have been doing sipce, well,
1986. We started out working solely in Latin
America and then since have sort of
broadened our skills. Now we’re planetwide.
We only work in countries that would qualify
for foreign aid. We don’t do crisis response
See LOCKHART, page 11