Volcano Tale

Once when I was working on a crab boat at night in the remote Bering Sea, a shipmate tapped me on the back, “Look!”

To the south of us maybe 10 miles away, one of the active volcanoes of the Alaska Peninsula, 9,300’ Shishaldin had just exhaled a spout of red flame, smoke, and ciders, lighting up the whole sky.

After a bit the sound came to us: a long, rumbling boom, audible even over the noise of our engines.

Volcanoes are nothing new to Alaskans; when Spurr or Redoubt, near Anchorage puffs, residents know to put extra nylon stocking air filters on their car engines.

And out in the remote and desolate Western Aleutians, volcanoes can blow with none to hear or see them.

Around 1917 a Coast Guard cutter was just about to drop off scientists for a few days at a volcano newly emerged from the Bering Sea, when they got a distress call and had to cancel the drop.

The scientists were disappointed but lucky: when the ship returned to drop them days later, the island was gone. It its place was a hundred-yard diameter column of ash, smoke, and fire emerging from the water, and blowing thousands of feet into the sky.

But some volcanoes are tamer. 3,200’ Mt. Edgecumbe, inactive for centuries, looms threateningly above Sitka.

Early one recent April’s Fool’s Day morning, pranksters choppered a load of old tires and set a smoky fire in the crater. Flew back to town and passed the word to sleepy residents: “She’s gonna blow!”