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National Geographic : 1966 Sep
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The volcano, rising as an island in Lake Taal, 40 miles south of Manila, roared for three days and blasted out untold tons of mud and glowing pumice (pages 306-7). Fields and houses were buried under siltlike ash. Two hundred people lost their lives, and thousands of homeless on the island and around the lake were taken to relief centers. Six weeks after the eruption, I went out to visit Taal Volcano with Dr. Arturo Alcaraz, chief volcanologist of the Philippines, and Dr. James G. Moore of the U. S. Geological Sur vey, a volcano expert sent by President John son to investigate the eruption. We drove along one of my favorite roads, a modern highway that seems to wander rather than rush between rows of tidy homes. The grass was a glossy green, with colorful explosions of poinsettias, hibiscus, plumed banana plants, and coconut palms. On the road we met buses that looked like parade floats, their rooftops laden with gaily colored vegetables and fruits. Volcano Created "Hailstones" of Clay "The eruption was not unexpected," said Dr. Alcaraz, "because the temperature of the lake had been rising. The people on the island were warned, and there was time for partial evacuation." "Is it possible to predict exactly when a volcano will erupt?" I asked. "No, not exactly," replied Dr. Moore. "It's like a balloon. You can say that a balloon will break when it is blown up, but it's difficult to tell exactly when." Near the lakeside village of San Nicolas, Dr. Alcaraz stopped the car, and we walked to a 10-foot bank at the roadside. "This is material laid down by an earlier eruption of Taal," he said. With his knife he dug out several small Family dines upstairs, livestock below at a farmer's hut on the island of Mindanao. Tethered carabaos, a species of water buf falo, labor as all-purpose beasts of burden; rooting hogs provide meat for the table. One- and two-room dwellings of bamboo and nipa-palm thatch still house most rural Filipino families, though concrete homes slowly spread from the cities. Suburban shoppers, exchanging gossip in a supermarket near Manila, live in a differ ent world from that of the bundok-a word adopted as "boondocks" by slang-loving American soldiers to describe back country. hard clay balls, and Dr. Moore explained that they were accretionary lapilli-little mud marbles built up in the "explosion clouds" caused by the volcano. "They bounced around in the turbulent upper air and built up, layer by layer, until they were heavy enough to fall," he said. "It's hard to say when these fell-maybe 50 years ago, maybe 500. But similar ones formed during the recent eruption." At the village we met a Filipino seismolo gist named Conrado Andal, who agreed to take us to the volcano in a 15-foot powerboat. As we got under way, I noticed bits of black pumice floating on the choppy water. Before us loomed the island. From time to time portions of the cliffs broke off, sending up plumes of ash; from a distance it looked like smoke. A deep layer of dried mud, now much seamed by rain, covered the southern side of the island. Mr. Andal recalled the nightmarish morn ing when Taal began to erupt. He had been on duty at the island's seismograph station. "About two in the morning there was an explosion, with fire and a lot of noise," he said. "People were calling and screaming in KAND TED SPIEGEL, RAPHOGUILLUMETTE © N N.G.S. AND TED SPIEGEL, RAPHO GUILLUMETTE © N.G.S. 305
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