How to Cope With an Eruption

[bjdeming]

This Discover article by Paul Smaglik was "spurred" by Spurr (ahem) but it is so generally detailed and helpful that it probably should have a thread.

After all, there are a lot of active volcanoes, and even if you don't live near one, you might run into trouble while traveling for work or play. Also, some eruptions, in some circumstances, can have a surprisingly long reach.

Finding authoritative official information outside the US can be tricky -- not so much in places like, say, Iceland, Japan, the Canary Islands, or Mexico, but in some other places. I'll be glad to help out with any specific questions, if possible, on an amateur basis.

The only additions I'd make to Mr. Smaglik's article are:

• Expect the unexpected. A quiet volcano can be just as dangerous as a quiet (plugged) pressure cooker sitting on a burner set at high; also, not all of the active volcanoes out there have been identified (Vesuvius caught the Romans by surprise by waking up in 79 AD after an 800-year sleep, and it was only by luck that Pinatubo didn't do the same for Filipinos and Americans in 1991).
• Don't risk lives -- yours and/or others -- for a selfie or some cool eruption footage. Follow authorities' instructions.
• Protect your pets and livestock, too. Ash irritates their mucous membranes just as it does ours, and it can poison water and food.
• Watch out for gases, especially carbon dioxide because it's odorless and accumulates in lethal amounts -- skiers at California's Mammoth Mountain volcanic complex have died from it, even though no eruption is pending or ongoing there.
• Also watch out for volcanic tsunamis, either from collapse, as at Anak Krakatau in 2018 --

-- or from the impact of debris or pyroclastic flows, as at Stromboli now and then.​

• That Dante's Peak hot spring scene isn't common in real life but it can happen.