Stuck Between a Volcano and a Hard Place (part 2): Politics and Geology Square Off in a Small Town with a Big Problem

I've been more and more concerned about the public damage being done to the scientific community and larger society as politics has swirled like a tornado around global warming, climate change, and pandemics. Trust is eroding in some quarters, and I only see this leading to worse disasters in the years to come (and really, nearly a million Americans dead is a huge disaster, even though it unfolded slowly over two years; just imagine the impact if those people had died all on one day). This damaged social compact between those who do science and the society at large reminded me that it isn't the first time this kind of issue has affected the public, and a few years ago I wrote about it in a two-part series. Here, with some modifications and updates, is part two.

Twin Lakes, above the town of Mammoth Lakes on the edge of the Long Valley Caldera

So what happened in Mammoth Lakes?

In the last post we talked about the titanic explosion at the Long Valley Caldera 760,000 years and tried to comprehend the scale of an event where 150 cubic miles of ash was blown into the atmosphere, covering much of the country. We then fast-forwarded to the near-present day of Mammoth Lakes in the 1980s. When we left the story, geologists were trying to decide what to do at the ski resort town in the face of astounding earthquake swarms, ground level changes, and increased geothermal activity.

It could probably be called a (tragi)comedy of errors. The USGS volcanologists carefully prepared a report to accompany a NOTICE OF POTENTIAL VOLCANIC HAZARD, the lowest level warning in their guidelines. A reporter from the Los Angeles Times figured out what was going on and published a story about the potential volcanic activity the day before the USGS released their report. The geologists got scooped, in other words, and the story became a runaway train in the national media. The government and emergency services personnel who were supposed to get the report and develop a response plan were blindsided by reporters asking them how it felt to be living in a doomed town.

The carefully worded statement from the USGS noted that "available evidence is insufficient to suggest that a hazardous event is imminent", but it was their description of the hazards that caught the attention of reporters and news hosts: rocks falling out of the sky miles from the eruptive vents, hot ash flows melting thick snowpacks and producing dangerous mudflows, and dangerous gases suffocating people. The very manna of the most desired headline: if it bleeds, it leads.

Hot Creek, a geothermal site in the Long Valley Caldera

By some accounts, the damage to the economy of Mammoth Lakes from the media circus may have been worse than an actual volcanic eruption (though no one died). Tourists stayed away in droves, businesses went belly up, and condo projects were abandoned. The business leaders of the town were livid at the geologists for stirring things up and scaring people (although by my reading, their notices were very conservative and carefully worded). They demanded that the geologists stop their campaign of terror/error, accusing them of bad science or something darker. There were even bomb threats (I had forgotten that detail; see the reference at the end of this post).

Warning sign at Horseshoe Lake, one of the carbon dioxide tree-kill sites on Mammoth Mountain.

The geologists could only respond in disbelief. I feel like I would have said something along the lines of "You are sitting on top of an active body of magma that is a few thousand feet from the surface! It would be irresponsible to keep such a thing secret". The geologists stuck to their guns, and the threat level remained at level one, the lowest level of concern, but concern nonetheless.

The business owners and local politicians went up the chain of command. They appealed to the head of the USGS, and his boss, the Secretary of the Interior, a man named James Watt. They may have communicated with then-president Reagan. As far as I can tell, there was intense political pressure from above, and eventually the director of the USGS unilaterally scrapped the warning system. Poof! It was gone. No discussion. It its place would be an informal warning system of quiet communications between geologists and civic leaders.

If this were a Hollywood movie, what happens next would be preordained. Everyone would come back. The skiers would be happily sliding down the slopes, businesses would be taking in money hand over fist, and suddenly out of nowhere there would be a resounding explosion and all hell would break loose as the caldera gives way to a catastrophic eruption that kills the "evil" business leaders because they had been greedy, and a gritty, yet handsome geologist would lead a beautiful woman and her plucky children to safety. Heck, I could see casting someone like, oh, say, Pierce Brosnan as the geologist and Linda Hamilton as the lady. Maybe call it "Dante's Peak" and move the setting to Idaho for some reason.

Yeah, I'd say that casting choice for the geologist was about right. Either one of them....

But that isn't what happened, of course. The molten magma was almost certainly there, but it cooled and solidified instead of continuing to the surface. The earthquake swarms ebbed, but other swarms have taken place over the years, though most have been tectonic in origin (related to faulting rather than magma). Gases from the magma chamber, especially carbon dioxide, have continued to seep from the ground, killing trees and other vegetation in several areas, including Horseshoe Lake (below). The gases actually killed three people a few years ago.  After some years, the USGS established a volcano observatory that monitors Long Valley, and came up with a new warning system, one with four stages, and specific actions to be taken with each. It's based on colors, just like our former Bush-era terrorism warning system. The town's economy slowly recovered. They started building condos again.

Tree kill area at Horseshoe Lake. Carbon dioxide in the soil suffocates the roots and microorganisms necessary for the tree's survival

Some of the political leaders took a bit of action. One of the main concerns was that an eruption would have destroyed the only paved road out of town. No evacuation would have been possible if the highway was blocked off. A few years after the brouhaha, a road appeared at the upper end of town called the Mammoth Lakes Scenic Route. I have to say that as a geologist that I didn't see a whole lot of scenery as I drove this nice paved highway, but I couldn't help but notice that it was exactly where I would have chosen to put an evacuation route (according to Dick Thompson in Volcano Cowboys, the county supervisors responsible were recalled from office for arranging this bit of road-building; it was like an admission that volcanism was actually possible).

Hot Creek, one of the centers of geothermal activity within the Long Valley Caldera.

In the end, one can only say mistakes were made. Some of those mistakes involved a sort of public relations tone deafness, like releasing a volcano warning on the eve of a holiday weekend, but other mistakes were more nefarious.

There were people willing to deny the possibility of a natural catastrophe in order to protect their profit margins. I see too many parallels in today's political (but not scientific) debates over global warming and climate change, and in the willful denial of the Covid pandemic. The geologists had clear evidence of a volcanic threat and the civic response was to deny the evidence and to attack the reputation of the geologists who were trying to do the right thing. There was a threat to the economy of Mammoth Lakes, but the threat was from a geologic process, not those who discovered and analyzed the volcanic hazard. And threatening the lives of the geologists was criminal. And apparently unpunished.

And the media. What to do about the media? Isn't it amazing how media outlets were willing to blow a story way out of proportion in order to gain ratings? Isn't it nice to know that they don't do that sort of thing anymore? And that the internet (which didn't exist as such in 1983) has turned out to be the very model of accurate and measured analysis of stories like this one, despite the possible instant dissemination of incorrect and potentially dangerous information? I'm so glad we live in an age of logic and reason and respect of scientific research.

Oh, I'm sorry. I briefly stepped into "Opposite-world". I'm back now. Science education and science literacy have never been more important in a world where the internet and media are so irresponsible with their analysis of geological hazards. Every time there is another major earthquake or volcanic eruption, I feel like throwing a shoe through the television screen or computer monitor as the talking heads begin babbling. Instead, I do what I can by throwing words out into the internet trying to offer up a more measured explanation of things. But the mostly ignorant talking heads always seem to win people's attention.

Just imagine the outcome if the geologists at Mammoth Lakes were effectively squelched, no warnings were ever given, and a volcanic eruption had actually occurred. Beyond the devastation, just imagine the scapegoating that would have happened in the aftermath. In Italy such a situation led to prison terms for half a dozen geologists who failed to predict a deadly earthquake (they have since been released).

We can do better than this. Especially those in the news business who are responsible in times of emergency for providing us with reasoned assessments, not sensationalist drabble. When the crisis is over, they can go back to their manic headlines about the personal lives of the stars.

You can read the original post from 2015 here: https://geotripper.blogspot.com/2015/02/the-sierra-beyond-yosemite-politics-and.html

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Although aspects of this story of the events at Mammoth Lakes and the Long Valley Caldera are drawn from my memory, I reviewed and confirmed many of the details in the excellent book called "The Volcano Cowboys: the Rocky Evolution of a Dangerous Science" by Dick Thompson (St. Martin's Press, 2002). Check it out, it's a fascinating account of the lives and activities of volcanologists.

The Hawai'i That Was: An Idyllic Paradise on the North Shore of Kaua'i. Sort of.

Photo by Mrs. Geotripper

If you have been there and think that Hanalei Bay is the most beautiful place on the planet, don't worry, I'm not going to diss it. It is indeed one of the most beautiful places I can imagine. It's been the setting for numerous films that needed an idyllic paradise for a backdrop, most notably South Pacific, the Wackiest Ship in the Army (with Jack Lemmon), Uncommon Valor (Gene Hackman, Patrick Swayze), and The Descendants (George Clooney). And who can forget She Gods of Shark Reef?

I've stood on the shoreline, looking towards Nāmolokama Mountain, and there were dozens of waterfalls in view, falling hundreds of feet. The slopes were choked with tropical vegetation, providing a contrast to the rich tan colored sand and the blue water. It's close to the ideal of paradise.

The secret is rainfall, of course. The average precipitation along the shoreline ranges from 80-120 inches a year, and the steep mountain cliffs above wring far more water out of the clouds. The mountaintop just to the south, Mt. Waialeale, has at least a claim to being the wettest place on planet Earth, with a yearly average of more than 400 inches per year!

There's a flip side to being paradise, though. One notices while driving through the small villages along the shoreline that many houses are built on stilts, sitting high off the ground. It's a hint that paradise comes with certain dangers.  The shoreline is exposed to tsunamis, and in some events, most notably in 1946, the surging waves reached a depth of 19 feet, causing severe damage. Even high winter surf (especially in the age of global warming and sea level rise) can endanger some structures as well as the coastal highway.

River flooding is another problem. The rains can come in torrents, and Hanalei River overflows its banks regularly. The pier at Hanalei Bay (above) is a favorite destination of mine (as well as many others!), and one might wonder why there's a roof over the end of the structure. There could be many reasons, but I suspect that since lots of people like to spend time there fishing and picnicking, it's nice to have a place to stay out of the rain, because the weather can change in an instant.

I was surprised by a fierce downpour a couple of years back when I was on the pier, and I took some snapshots of the storm. As I looked at the photos later on, I noticed something strange.

Those spots in the picture were not bits of spray on my lens. They were huge rain drops, caught in suspension by the fast shutter speed. I sort of knew it already, but the picture shows that raindrops are roughly spherical, and not the tear-drop shaped blob that illustrations usually make them out to be.

I am always telling my students that there is no place in the world where one is safe from geological hazards. It's not meant to scare anyone, but instead is meant to encourage people to seek an understanding of the potential threats that they might face if they want to put down roots somewhere. Paradise means different things to different people, but Hanalei Bay comes close in my opinion. Just pay attention to those tsunami sirens when they go off...

The Importance of a Geology Education: Reflections on a Horrible Disaster in Louisiana (and others to come)

Hey, everyone! Raise your hands if you think a geology course should be REQUIRED of all students! [crickets]. Yeah, I thought so.

Geology classes occupy a somewhat uncomfortable zone within the standard college curriculum. Biology and chemistry are stand-alone majors, but they also provide important support to nursing programs and related health industries. Physics and mathematics likewise support numerous majors. But then there's that list of geology courses: they provide a pathway into employment in such diverse areas as oil and gas development, mining, water resources, parks interpretation, and education. But the number of geology majors is generally small in relation to other programs. And few students are really ever required to take a geology or earth science course as part of a different curriculum, with the occasional exception of a liberal arts degree leading to a teaching credential. Much of the time, geology courses mainly fill the role of general education breadth requirements, one choice among many.

Is there an argument for making geology classes mandatory in a college curriculum? Sure, for one good reason: geology can kill you. Oh sure, biology can kill you, given that whole disease thing, and pandemics, and grizzly bears and mountain lions.  Mathematics and physics can kill you, but usually in the context of a geologic disaster (or standing in the beam of a particle accelerator). I state this in a perhaps humorous vein, but with the burgeoning population of our planet, geologic disasters are becoming more and more commonplace. People are being forced to live in environments that are more and more dangerous, and the geologic events themselves are becoming more intense. Hurricanes and other weather events are being intensified by higher temperatures in the oceans and atmosphere, for instance. Earthquakes are not getting bigger (unless one lives in an area where fracking occurs), but with higher sea levels in the near future, the reach of tsunamis will increase.

Artist: Mark Waters, a student in the very first class I ever taught.

How far do we look for examples? This week I am watching dozens of fires burning through hundreds of thousands of acres of California, destroying hundreds of homes. Entire communities have been gutted. The fires are being intensified by an unprecedented drought entering its sixth year (the Colorado Plateau is in the fourteenth year of drought). At least 300 buildings have been lost in the Blue Cut Fire, but I wonder how many people in the area realize they are also living on the San Andreas fault, or that many of the homes in Wrightwood (in the affected area) are built on recent mudflow deposits?

And Louisiana...what can one say about Louisiana? It was just a rainstorm. A catastrophic 1,000 year rainstorm that dropped something like 2+ feet of water from the sky in just a few days. Tens of thousands of homes have been severely damaged, and people have died. A 1,000 year storm...a storm that has a 0.1% of happening in a given year. And yet West Virginia also suffered a 1,000 year storm in July. And there have been others.

My entire train of thought on this topic happened because I came across some articles that stated that only around a fifth of the victims of this week's flooding in Louisiana had flood insurance. My first thought was to wonder how in the world, in Louisiana, that this could be the case? There are many reasons, mostly financial (this is not the richest part of the country). But there are many other factors, too, and lack of education has to be one of them. Of course, there is the Mississippi and other rivers that flood regularly. But there is also the rise of sea level, and the subsidence taking place in the Delta. There are the changes in the intensity and timing of hurricanes and other intense storms due to climate change. People don't understand the risk of living where they choose to live (or where they are forced to live by circumstances). It makes no sense to skip on the insurance.

I then thought of California, where of course people are richer and better educated (please note, this is sarcasm, not a statement of fact). It took a few moments to find that only 17% of the residents of our state are covered by earthquake insurance (I strongly recommend reading the entire article). It's not hard to live in denial about the very real possibility of quakes in many parts of the state, but seventeen percent! Earthquake insurance can be expensive, but consider just why that is: these companies are not in the business to lose money, and their actuarial tables are probably a better indicator of the chances of earthquake damage than almost any geologic map (mind you, it's geologists who help calculate the odds that are used in actuarial tables).

People who live in ignorance also live in great danger. No place in the country is without the threat of some kind of natural disaster. One cannot realistically prepare for a cataclysm if one doesn't know that the possibility of the event exists. Education is the key, and it should be part of the curriculum of elementary and secondary schools as well as college. Community awareness, whether through social media or broadcast media needs to come from sources that are responsible and rational. There is so much CRAP on the internet that anyone could be forgiven for a sense of confusion. One group of ignorant people above all others who need an education in geologic hazards are the politicians. Science is almost never an issue in political campaigns (politicians seem to think we need to be more concerned with saluting flags and where people relieve their bladders). We need leadership at all levels of government to support community education, and to start dealing realistically with geologic threats and climate change (instead of denying that they exist).

Intense November Weather in Central California...and Tornadoes?

Credit: Jacquetta Wehking

I tell my students on occasion that they live in a place that is relatively free of the most serious geological hazards. We are a fair distance from the earthquake faults that wreak havoc on the coastal cities (the San Andreas and Hayward faults, for instance). We mostly live on a river terrace so serious floods do not impact most of the city (the floodplain developments are an exception of course). We live far from volcanoes or steep slopes that can fail. But I also warn them that there is no place in the world that is entirely free of geologic hazards. I got reminded of that today. A tornado touched down just a few miles from my house, causing some serious damage, but thankfully no one was hurt. Friends were witness to the event. It was uncomfortably close.

Tornadoes are not all that rare in California. No one could mistake our funnel clouds for the monsters that regularly roar down through Tornado Alley in the central United States, but there have been 403 confirmed events between 1950 and 2013. The majority have been weak, as only 25 of them reached EF2 or more. But they do happen, and there was enough energy in the latest storm to produce one this afternoon.

Source: http://thevane.gawker.com/maps-tornadoes-in-california-arent-as-rare-as-you-migh-1670728375

It's been a wild weather month here in central California. I went walking to see the retreating edge of the tornado-forming storm from the new parkway they're building along the Tuolumne River. It's looking very different than it has for most of the last four years. It's wet. Ponds of water covered parts of the recently aligned trail.

We've had three major storms in as many weeks, and they followed two weaker storms last month. The month is half over, but it is already the second wettest November in the twenty-five years I've been keeping records at my home east of Modesto in the Great Valley. We've received 2.48 inches, which is equivalent to nearly a fifth of year's normal precipitation. It would be nice if this were a harbinger of more storms to come. We've been in the throes of the worst drought in the historical record. Last year's snowpack in the Sierra Nevada amounted to less than five percent of normal. Our reservoirs are just about empty, and the shortfall would not be made up even if we had a record year of precipitation.

As much as we hope for an end to the drought, it's a clear case of being careful what you wish for. El Nino weather years are known for producing intense weather events, causing flooding and mudslides in central and southern California. And the El Nino that has been building in the Pacific Ocean this year is a record-breaker, a storm-maker on steroids. Our storms so far haven't even been warm storms out of the south. The main effects aren't really expected for another month or so.

As I walked this afternoon, I noted that there was already a small slope failure along the trail. It did no damage, but it's a warning of what may be coming.  I was reminded of the floods of 1997 when the Tuolumne River was flowing at 70,000 cubic feet per second, the highest ever recorded. The river threatened numerous bridges, and flooded more than 1,000 homes downstream. And the flood could have been worse had Don Pedro Reservoir upstream hadn't held back the highest flows (at one point, the inflows exceeded 130,000 cubic feet per second).

One thing I am anxious to see happen is a high enough runoff to scoop out the hyacinth plants that are threatening to cover the river. The invasive weed crowds out the native plants, blocks light from the river bottom, and lowers the oxygen content of the water. It's been around for years, but the infestation has been particular bad in this year of constantly low flows.

I turned around and reveled in the sunset and fall colors that have finally arrived. I know that a lot of you live in places where the fall colors are astounding and all, but California is simply a darn nice place to live, despite all her problems. Here I was walking in a light shirt and short pants, in the middle of November still enjoying the changing leaves of the trees. I can visit snow if I want to, but I won't be shoveling it. It's been a tough four years of drought, but maybe the tide is turning. A record wet November is certainly a good start. I can do without the tornadoes, though.

The Sierra Beyond Yosemite: Politics and Geology Square Off in a Town with a Big Problem

Twin Lakes, above the town of Mammoth Lakes on the edge of the Long Valley Caldera

So what happened in Mammoth Lakes?

In the last post we talked about the titanic explosion at the Long Valley Caldera 760,000 years and tried to comprehend the scale of an event where 150 cubic miles of ash was blown into the atmosphere, covering much of the country. We then fast-forwarded to the near-present day of Mammoth Lakes in the 1980s. When we left the story, geologists were trying to decide what to do at the ski resort town in the face of astounding earthquake swarms, ground level changes, and increased geothermal activity.

It could probably be called a (tragi)comedy of errors. The USGS volcanologists carefully prepared a report to accompany a NOTICE OF POTENTIAL VOLCANIC HAZARD, the lowest level warning in their guidelines. A reporter from the Los Angeles Times figured out what was going on, and published a story about the potential volcanic activity the day before the USGS released their report. The geologists got scooped, in other words, and the story became a runaway train in the national media.. The government and emergency services personnel who were supposed to get the report and develop a response plan were blindsided by reporters asking them how it felt to be living in a doomed town.

The carefully worded statement from the USGS noted that "available evidence is insufficient to suggest that a hazardous event is imminent", but it was their description of the hazards that caught the attention of reporters and news hosts: rocks falling out of the sky miles from the eruptive vents, hot ash flows melting thick snowpacks and producing dangerous mudflows, and dangerous gases suffocating people. The very manna of the most desired headline: if it bleeds, it leads.

Hot Creek, a geothermal site in the Long Valley Caldera

By some accounts, the damage to the economy of Mammoth Lakes from the media circus may have been worse than an actual volcanic eruption (though no one died). Tourists stayed away in droves, businesses went belly up, and condo projects were abandoned. The business leaders of the town were livid at the geologists for stirring things up and scaring people (although by my reading, their notices were very conservative and carefully worded). They demanded that the geologists stop their campaign of terror/error, accusing them of bad science or something darker. There were even bomb threats (I had forgotten that detail; see the reference at the end of this post).

Warning sign at Horseshoe Lake, one of the carbon dioxide tree-kill sites on Mammoth Mountain.

The geologists could only respond in disbelief. I feel like I would have said  something along the lines of "You are sitting on top of an active body of magma that is a few thousand feet from the surface! It would be irresponsible to keep such a thing secret". The geologists stuck to their guns, and the threat level remained at level one, the lowest level of concern, but concern nonetheless.

The business owners and local politicians went up the chain of command. They appealed to the head of the USGS, and his boss, the Secretary of the Interior, a man named James Watt. They may have communicated with then-president Reagan. As far as I can tell, there was intense political pressure from above, and eventually the director of the USGS unilaterally scrapped the warning system. Poof! It was gone. No discussion. It its place would be an informal warning system of quiet communications between geologists and civic leaders.

If this were a Hollywood movie, what happens next would be preordained. Everyone would come back. The skiers would be happily sliding down the slopes, businesses would be taking in money hand over fist, and suddenly out of nowhere there would be a resounding explosion and all hell would break loose as the caldera gives way to a catastrophic eruption that kills the "evil" business leaders because they had been greedy, and a gritty, yet handsome geologist would lead a beautiful woman and her plucky children to safety. Heck, I could see casting someone like, oh, say, Pierce Brosnan as the geologist and Linda Hamilton as the lady. Maybe call it "Dante's Peak" and move the setting to Idaho for some reason.

Yeah, I'd say that casting choice for the geologist was about right. Either one of them....

But that isn't what happened, of course. The molten magma was almost certainly there, but it cooled and solidified instead of continuing to the surface. The earthquake swarms ebbed, but other swarms have taken place over the years, though most have been tectonic in origin (related to faulting rather than magma). Gases from the magma chamber, especially carbon dioxide, have continued to seep from the ground, killing trees and other vegetation in several areas, including Horseshoe Lake (below). The gases actually killed three people a few years ago.  After some years, the USGS established a volcano observatory that monitors Long Valley, and came up with a new warning system, one with four stages, and specific actions to be taken with each. It's based on colors, just like the terrorism warning system! The town's economy slowly recovered. They started building condos again.

Tree kill area at Horseshoe Lake. Carbon dioxide in the soil suffocates the roots and microorganisms necessary for the tree's survival

Some of the political leaders took a bit of action. One of the main concerns was that an eruption would have destroyed the only paved road out of town. No evacuation would have been possible if the highway was blocked off. A few years after the brouhaha, a road appeared at the upper end of town called the Mammoth Lakes Scenic Route. I have to say that as a geologist that I didn't see a whole lot of scenery as I drove this nice paved highway, but I couldn't help but notice that it was exactly where I would have chosen to put an evacuation route (according to Dick Thompson in Volcano Cowboys, the county supervisors responsible were recalled from office for arranging this bit of road-building; it was like an admission that volcanism was actually possible).

Hot Creek, one of the centers of geothermal activity within the Long Valley Caldera.

In the end, one can only say mistakes were made. Some of those mistakes involved a sort of public relations tone deafness, like releasing a volcano warning on the eve of a holiday weekend, but other mistakes were more nefarious.

There were people willing to deny the possibility of a natural catastrophe in order to protect their profit margins. I see parallels in today's political (but not scientific) debates over global warming and climate change. The geologists had clear evidence of a volcanic threat and the civic response was to deny the evidence and to attack the reputation of the geologists who were trying to do the right thing. There was a threat to the economy of Mammoth Lakes, but the threat was from a geologic process, not those who discovered and analyzed the volcanic hazard. And threatening the lives of the geologists was criminal.

And the media. What to do about the media? Isn't it amazing how media outlets were willing to blow a story way out of proportion in order to gain ratings? Isn't it nice to know that they don't do that sort of thing anymore? And that the internet (which didn't exist as such in 1983) has turned out to be the very model of accurate and measured analysis of stories like this one, despite the possible instant dissemination of incorrect and potentially dangerous information? I'm so glad we live in an age of logic and reason and respect of scientific research.

Oh, I'm sorry. I briefly stepped into "Opposite-world". I'm back now. Science education and science literacy have never been more important in a world where the internet and media are so irresponsible with their analysis of geological hazards. Every time there is another major earthquake or volcanic eruption, I feel like throwing a shoe through the television screen or computer monitor as the talking heads begin babbling. Instead, I do what I can by throwing words out into the internet trying to offer up a more measured explanation of things. But the mostly ignorant talking heads always seem to win people's attention.

Just imagine the outcome if the geologists at Mammoth Lakes were effectively squelched, no warnings were ever given, and a volcanic eruption had actually occurred. Beyond the devastation, just imagine the scapegoating that would have happened in the aftermath. In Italy such a situation led to prison terms for half a dozen geologists who failed to predict a deadly earthquake (they have since been released).

We can do better than this. Especially those in the news business who are responsible in times of emergency for providing us with reasoned assessments, not sensationalist dribble. When the crisis is over they can go back to their manic headlines about the personal lives of the stars.

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Although aspects of this story of the events at Mammoth Lakes and the Long Valley Caldera are drawn from my memory, I reviewed and confirmed many of the details in the excellent book called "The Volcano Cowboys: the Rocky Evolution of a Dangerous Science" by Dick Thompson (St. Martin's Press, 2002). Check it out, it's a fascinating account of the lives and activities of volcanologists.