Surviving Galeras
   Stanley Williams & Fen Montaigne
  2001 Houghton Mifflin Co., Boston USA
   ISBN: 0618031685


In 1993 geologists & volcanologists convened in the Colombian town of Pasto, high in the Northern Andes. Galeras has a long history of eruptions with surprisingly low body counts. About 5 miles from the crater these scientists were making friends, exchanging research & waiting for their trek up to Galeras' lip.

I wasn't particularly keen to immerse myself into these volcano-jumpers' lives. Hey, the world is dangerous enough without actually putting myself into the maw of a seething pustule on the cheek of the Earth about to burst! Right?

Surviving Galeras is much more than one person's encounter with the belching of Mother Earth: it is the history of volcanology & a who's who of this esoteric & deadly science. Galeras turns out to be a volcanologist's dream - three times in the same year it spews & rumbles, becoming a magnet for everyone with that sort of appetite.

On a clear day, steam can be seen rising from Galeras, & while old friends met in the lush tropical landscape town, noticing signs of this & that, no one actually believed an eruption was imminent.

In this first-hand account of an encounter of the fire & brimstone kind, we're soothed into academic complacency with data & the love of lavaland; the statistics of acreage altered; plumes spewed; boulders the size of cars hurled; towns swallowed & people entombed. Again & again, we return to Galeras' eruption & its aftermath.

As Stanley's wife Lynda writes: “Part of you died at Galeras. You were put back together like Humpty Dumpty, patted on the back and told that your recovery was impressive.” Stanley would not, however, ever be the same again.

When the authors are writing about the history of each volcano & its affect on surrounding landscapes; weather & populations; other volcanologists & their stories, they offer up a fully-fleshed absorbing read.

Stanley Williams is a professor of geology at Arizona State University.

Fen Montaigne writes frequently for National Geographic is the author of Reeling in Russia & was a finalist for the 1995 Pulitzer Prize feature writer.
(05/20/01)

Rebecca