Volcanoes

[Blind groper]

I was talking to a friend recently, about our personal experiences with volcanoes, and I thought this is something a few of us possibly can share. What personal experiences have you had?

To kick off, let me tell you about Rabaul. This town in Papua New Guinea has a massive deep harbour (an old crater) surrounded by several volcanoes. In 1994, two of them suddenly burst into life, and buried the downtown part of Rabaul under metres of ash. I was there about 4 years ago.

We were standing by the edge of the harbour, looking across an arm of water at the clouds of ash still pouring out. We had umbrellas up since it was raining, when a massive new outpouring of ash suddenly flared up. The falling rain changed to acidic mud. How many people can say they have stood under an umbrella to save them from drops of acidic mud?

Then there was a very loud noise and the volcano burped. We saw a red hot lump of rock thrown into the air, flying straight at us. We were about a kilometre from the crater, and fortunately, this object fell into the harbour about half a kilometre from us. It was red hot and I estimate it would have been the size of a volkswagon.

The power of volcanoes is awesome. What have you seen?

[Gawdzilla Sama]

I lived on the slopes of Mt. Etna for three years. Several minor eruptions. Nearly got cut off by a lava flow once. And there's a case of beer forever entombed near the summit.