Dr. B's Finest Kind Medical clinic and Fish Market

Tonite, National Geographic channel is having a special on the Galeras eruption that killed six scientists. There is a big controversy about this, since the scientists didn't wear protective clothing, have oxygen, or even wear hard hats. Since the leader of the scientists survived, he is often "blamed" for their deaths, overlooking the fact that the deaths included several tourists and that some of the vulcanologist who were killed had more experience than he did, yet did not bother to wear the protective clothing (which may not saved their lives anyway).

http://www.geology.wisc.edu/courses/g111/Volcanoes/Galeras/galeras.htm

http://outside.away.com/outside/magazine/200104/200104galeras1.html

http://teacher.scholastic.com/researchtools/articlearchives/volcanoes/galeras.htm

The clue to the argument is the tourists. You see, my sons come from the nearby city of Pasto. Pasto is literally down the hill from Galeras (See the photo? Pasto is the city. Six hundred people live there. Think Pittsburgh sitting on a time bomb).

My sons climbed up to the top of Galeras several times. Lots of people climbed up, had a picnic, and climbed down the same day. Yes, Galeras is 14000 feet high, but Pasto is at 8000 feet, and the slope is gentle.

At the time of the scientists' deaths, there were small earthquakes and rumblings. The city authorities had plans to evacuate the city if things got worse. And so international scientists went there to join the local vulcano observatory scientist to figure out if they could predict the eruption. (This was done in Mt. Pinatubo, which saved tens of thousands of lives in the Philippines).

But when they went up on a daytrip, the volcano was merely mildly rumbling. And the "eruption" was a tiny one, that merely spouted a little lava that ruined a small (evacuated) village on the far side away from Pasto.

But the rumbling had been going on for at least six months before, and obviously, it didn't scare the locals enough to stop them from having a picnic.

So if the NG is critical of the scientists for lack of foresight, just remember: The scientists and the locals didn't see anything different from the previous 100 days. And the scientists were there to save lives.

After the small eruption, Galeras went quiet again. But in another scenerio, a large eruption could have killed half a million people. So hats off to scientists who save lives at the risk of their own life. Criticizing people for forgetting hard hats is like screening a flea and ignoring the elephant: The elephant is that 500 000 lives were at stake.

We Americans are lucky that we don't have to worry about volcanoes in our city's back yards. We are so safe...not...

http://www.nypost.com/news/regionalnews/30643.htm

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