When Science Goes Wrong

by Simon Levay

  The American group, besides Williams, included Fraser Goff, a chemist from the Los Alamos National Laboratory, Andrew Macfarlane of Florida International University, and Charles Wood, a planetary scientist from the University of North Dakota who was working on technologies for predicting volcanic eruptions with satellites. Williams also invited Bernard Chouet as well as other USGS scientists. In what may have been a fateful decision, however, the USGS prohibited its scientists from attending the meeting, citing the unstable security situation in Colombia. Thus Williams and the other meeting participants were deprived of the expertise of the one person who, in retrospect, was best qualified to save them from tragedy. ‘If I had been down there at the time and I had seen the long-period events,’ says Chouet, ‘I would certainly have voiced my opinion that it was not an appropriate time to go into the crater. But I couldn’t have just jumped in front of them and said, “Over my dead body!” so I don’t know what the outcome would have been.’

  The meeting began with three days of scientific talks. Most of the talks were not specifically about Galeras, but two of the Colombian seismologists, Gomez and Torres, did talk (in Spanish) about the seismic history of the volcano, including mention of the tornillos that had preceded the eruption of the previous summer. This issue was particularly relevant because, after several months of relative calm, the volcano had begun to show signs of renewed activity toward the end of the year. Two days before Christmas a new tornillo had been recorded, and further tornillos had been occurring at a rate of about one a day, right up through the beginning of the meeting. If Chouet was right, the new series of tornillos signalled that the magma was knocking insistently at the roof of the mountain and would soon blow its lava cap to pieces – a scenario that would make a trip to the caldera a risky, even foolhardy, enterprise.

  In view of the tragedy that followed, the question of what was discussed about the current status of Galeras has great significance, yet there are very divergent accounts of the matter. One account was presented by geologist-turned-science-writer Victoria Bruce in her 2001 book No Apparent Danger. According to Bruce, there was explicit discussion of the tornillos, Chouet’s theory, and the imminent likelihood of an eruption. The linkage between long-period events and eruptions was, in her eyes, pretty much established scientific fact at the time of the meeting, and Williams decided to go ahead with the field trip in the face of explicit warnings from seismologists that an eruption might be looming. His decision, in Bruce’s view, could be explained only by a reckless ‘cowboy’ attitude, perhaps combined with blind belief in the superiority of his own favourite technique – gas analysis.

  In his own 2001 book, Surviving Galeras (written with Fen Montaigne), Williams painted a very different picture. ‘As our conference got under way,’ he wrote:

  INGEOMINAS and foreign seismologists were not alarmed by this desultory pattern of tornillos; at the time, such small numbers were considered benign… Only after further eruptions in 1993 did we finally come to understand that small numbers of tornillos at Galeras – even as few as one or two a day – might presage an eruption. But there was no such understanding then. In the days before our trip into the crater, no one brought the tornillos to my attention or warned that the volcano might be poised to blow… Based on all available evidence, the consensus at the observatory was that Galeras was safe.

  I asked Charles Wood (who is now at Wheeling Jesuit University in West Virginia) for his view of the matter, and he generally sided with Williams. ‘My perception is that there was no serious question about whether we should take this field trip,’ he said. If the Colombian scientists discussed the ominous significance of the tornillos, their message was lost on Wood and perhaps the other foreigners too. ‘My Spanish is rudimentary, and I mostly talked with the English-speakers,’ he said. ‘I would say that the work Bernard [Chouet] had done was not well enough known, and probably not well enough documented – I’m speculating – to say that if you see any of these screw-type features, you know there’s going to be an eruption in the next 24 hours or whatever. It’s not clear to me that there was that level of awareness of their predictive value.’ Wood also complained that Virginia Bruce, who interviewed him twice for her book, never disclosed her critical views of Williams, and thus gave Wood no motivation or opportunity to defend him.

  Another scientist who took issue with Bruce’s book was Chouet’s colleague, Fernando Gil. In Bruce’s account, Gil had a conversation with Williams on the night before the field trip, in which he warned Williams about the tornillos and emphasised the danger of an impending eruption. Williams, Bruce says, refused to cancel the trip, though he did agree to cut down the number of scientists who would be allowed to enter the crater. But when Bruce’s book was published in 2001, Gil told the Chronicle of Higher Education that this purported conversation between him and Williams didn’t happen.

  The field trip was originally scheduled for the third day of the meeting, January 13. In what would turn out to be a fateful change of plan, however, the organisers rescheduled the trip for the following day – the reason being a planned power outage on January 14 that would make indoor lectures impossible on that day. According to Wood, heavy rain on the 13th was another factor in the decision to postpone the trip. In any event, the scientists set out early on the morning of the 14th in a fleet of vehicles, and they reached the rim of the caldera at about 9am.

  It had stopped raining, but thick clouds and fog enveloped the volcano’s summit, reducing visibility to a few feet. The interior of the caldera was completely hidden. ‘It was a disappointing touristic experience,’ said Wood. ‘It was cold; we were all in our down jackets, milling around, getting some talks from different people.’

  By 10am, the fog had lifted slightly – enough, in Williams’s judgment, to permit the descent into the caldera. Only 12 scientists were to accompany Williams on that leg of the field trip, however. As had been previously arranged, the remaining scientists were to make a variety of other trips around the flanks of the volcano. Wood, for example, joined a group led by Marta Calvache and Patty Mothes, a young American volcanologist living in Ecuador. Their group would explore some deposits left by earlier eruptions, about a half-mile below the caldera rim. Wood was quite happy not to join Williams’s party. ‘Just going down into the caldera with that poor visibility would be dangerous,’ he said.

  One by one, the members of Williams’s group backed down the steep wall of the caldera while clinging to the fixed rope. Because of the fog, they were quickly lost to view from the rim. Within the caldera, however, visibility was better. By the time the scientists reached the ‘moat’ – the lowest part of the caldera between the outer ramparts and the central volcanic cone – they could see one another and the cone ahead of them. After crossing the moat they began trudging up the side of the cone toward the crater rim. It was slow going; the terrain was steep and exceedingly rough on account of the rocks and cinders that had been scattered across the slope during previous eruptions. The altitude of more than 13,000ft didn’t help, either: some of the party were decidedly out of shape and needed to pause for breath after every few steps.

  Among the 13 men, only one was wearing full protective gear. This was Andy Adams of Los Alamos: as a US government employee, he had to follow safety guidelines that mandated a hard hat, steel-toed boots, and fire-resistant coveralls. One other scientist, the Guatamalan Alfredo Roldan, wore a hard hat. Most of the others were bare-headed and wore down parkas. Williams poked fun at Adams for his seemingly excessive safety-consciousness, something that Adams didn’t find amusing.

  Three hikers followed the scientists into the caldera. These were a local professor, his teenage son and his son’s friend, who were visiting the caldera out of pure curiosity. They were dressed even less suitably than Williams: rather than boots, they were wearing trainers – a poor choice for navigating the clinker-strewn slopes of the volcanic cone.

  Once the scientists reached the top of the cone they could look down into t
he crater – a depression about 400ft wide, surrounded by almost sheer 100ft-high walls. Clouds of gas and steam were emerging from various spots on the crater floor, as well as from a group of fumaroles named Deformes on the southwest part of the crater rim. Aside from the gas venting, which had been going on for months, there was no sign of volcanic activity in the crater.

  About this time, the seismologist who was watching the seismographs back at the Observatory in Pasto noted the occurrence of a tornillo. She radioed the information up to Roberto Torres, who was on the caldera rim, and he relayed it to José Arles on the cone. José noted the information but didn’t consider it particularly worrisome – 15 tornillos had occurred over the previous three weeks, after all, without the volcano having shown the slightest sign of erupting.

  The scientists in the caldera now split up into small groups to carry out a variety of tasks and observations. Geoff Brown, the British gravity expert, led a group around the rim of the crater. They took measurements of gravity as they went, using a bulky but highly sensitive piece of equipment that they had lugged up the cone. Several other members of the group, including the chemist Andrew Macfarlane, gathered at the Deformes fumaroles to measure the temperature of the emitted gases and to collect samples for later analysis in the laboratory. The various tasks kept the scientists busy for a couple of hours.

  Around noon, two members of the party climbed down into the crater itself. These were two chemists, the Russian Igor Menyailov and the Colombian Nestor Garcia. They had finished sampling at the Deformes fumaroles and wanted to take more samples at the vents within the crater. The other scientists, including Williams, were content to watch from the crater rim. Williams took the opportunity to chat with the three hikers. About an hour later, most of the scientists began their return trip to the rim of the caldera – a trip that involved the descent of the central cone, the crossing of the moat, and the strenuous ascent of the 400ft-high caldera wall.

  At 1.41pm, the members of the party were positioned thus: one Colombian, Alfredo Roldan, had just completed the journey and was standing on the caldera rim giving an interview to reporters from a local television station. Two other Colombians, Fabio Garcia and Carlos Estrada, were in the process of climbing the caldera wall with the aid of the fixed rope. Andy Adams, the safety-conscious Los Alamos employee, was at the base of the caldera wall, preparing to start the climb. Eight other men – Williams, Macfarlane, Arles, an Ecuadorian geochemist named Luis LeMarie, an American geochemist named Mike Conway, and the three local hikers – were at various points between the top and the base of the central cone. Geoff Brown and the Colombians Carlos Trujillo and Fernando Cuenca were standing on the opposite, western, side of the crater rim, far from the trail that led out of the caldera. Igor Menyailov and Nestor Garcia were still on the floor of the crater.

  Precisely at 1.41pm was the moment when the upward force exerted by the magma within the volcano’s cone finally exceeded the downward force exerted by the weight of the overlying rock, and a devastating explosion ensued. The blast was followed by an unending roar as rocks and magma flew skyward. The blast ripped the floor of the crater to shreds, instantly killing Igor Menyailov and Nestor Garcia and vaporising their bodies. The three men who had been standing on the western rim of the crater were also killed instantly. Carlos Trujillo’s body was cut cleanly in half by a flying boulder; as for Geoff Brown and Fernando Cuenca, nothing was ever found of them beyond small fragments of flesh stuck to rocks.

  The eight men who were descending the cone broke into an instinctive mad downward rush. A barrage of incandescent rocks – some as small as bullets, some as big as television sets – began falling among them. As the rocks struck the ground they exploded like shells, firing off secondary showers of red-hot shrapnel in all directions.

  Four of the men – José Arles and all three of the local hikers – were killed within seconds as flying rocks stove in their skulls and smashed their bodies. Andrew Macfarlane was knocked down several times, once by a rock that struck his forehead, creating a hairline fracture in his skull and sending blood pouring into one eye. For a brief time he took refuge behind a rock, then he continued on his stumbling downward run. Every time he fell, his hands or body were seared by the rocks they touched, and he was forced to get up and struggle on. Then he came across Mike Conway and Luis LeMarie, who had found partial protection in a small hollow. The three men hid there for about five minutes, while the rain of rocks gradually abated and changed to harmless ash.

  Stanley Williams also took off running at the first explosion, but he was quickly knocked down by falling rocks. One rock smashed his right lower leg with such force as to almost completely sever it: his foot was left dangling at an unnatural angle from the leg, connected to it by a few strips of flesh. His other leg was also broken, and a third rock struck his head above his left ear: It dislocated his jaw, partially detached the retinas of both eyes, and drove fragments of skull into his brain. Smaller rocks burned holes in the skin of his back. He lay helpless, just a few feet from the lifeless body of José Arles. In spite of his terrible injuries, Williams remained alive and conscious, and he cried out for help. For a long time he received none.

  Roldan’s television interview on the rim of the caldera was rudely interrupted by the blast, as both he and the newsmen dived for cover. Roldan was struck on the head by a flying rock, but his hard hat saved his life. He crouched down behind the rim of the caldera and watched a cloud of ash and hot gas rise from the crater and reach more than a mile into the sky. At about the same time one of the policemen who was stationed at the guardhouse was also struck: the rock hit his lower arm and completely amputated one of his hands.

  Fabio Garcia and Carlos Estrada, who had been climbing the caldera wall at the time of the blast, were able to complete their climb safely, though they had to dodge a hail of rocks during the first five minutes. Andy Adams, who had not yet begun the climb at the time of the blast, was also able to climb out unaided. He was struck by innumerable small rocks, but his fireproof clothing and hard hat saved him from serious injury – he sustained only some burns on his unprotected neck.

  After the initial barrage of rocks subsided, Mike Conway, Luis LeMarie and Andy Macfarlane left their foxhole and began to make their way down the cone and out of the caldera. It was slow going. All three men had numerous cuts and burns. LeMarie had fractures in both legs. Macfarlane had several severe lacerations in addition to his head wound. It wasn’t until an hour after the eruption that the three men made it down to the moat, and then they faced the arduous ascent of the caldera wall. Conway, the least injured, was able to clamber to the caldera rim unaided. LeMarie was assisted up the rope by Carlos Estrada, who had climbed back down into the caldera to help him. Macfarlane could only make it as far as the bottom of the rope before he collapsed in pain and exhaustion.

  The initial explosion had alerted the groups of scientists who were on the outer flanks of the volcano. From where Marta Calvache and Patty Mothes’s group was positioned, about halfway down the volcano, the sound was not especially loud. ‘We were having lunch,’ said Wood. ‘We looked up, thinking, “What was that?” and we saw the [ash] cloud. Marta and Patty said, “OK, we’re going up; we have the most experience with this volcano – the rest of you evacuate down to Pasto.” So they got into a jeep and went up to the summit.’

  It took Calvache and Mothes about 30 minutes to reach the summit, because they first had to hike from their location to the access road where their vehicle was parked. Then, on the way up the road they met a military truck that contained most of the policemen who had been stationed at the guardhouse, including the man who had lost a hand. Calvache told a couple of the men to accompany them back to the summit in order to help with the rescue.

  When they got to the summit, they were met by a chaotic scene: a battered guardhouse, vehicles with windows smashed out, blood and rocks on the ground, and a large number of people, including a civilian rescue squad, who were milling about inef
fectually. No one had dared to descend into the caldera, but at that same moment two Colombians from the Observatory in Pasto, Ricardo Villota and Milton Ordoñez, arrived on the scene. They had been alerted by the violent signals that were appearing on their seismographs and, fearing the worst, they had rushed up the mountain in a truck. Villota and Ordoñez immediately began descending the steep rampart, and Calvache and Mothes followed them. They could see Andrew Macfarlane lying half-conscious at the bottom of the fixed rope, and although they couldn’t see Stanley Williams they could hear his calls for help. Thus they were spurred on to attempt a rescue, in spite of the danger of a renewed eruption.

  When they reached Macfarlane, Ordoñez and Mothes started to attend to his wounds. Soon, other helpers arrived, and eventually they were able to get Macfarlane onto a stretcher, haul him up to the caldera rim, and place him in an ambulance that rushed him off to a hospital in Pasto.

  Meanwhile Calvache and Villota had gone off in search of other survivors. They soon saw that the three local hikers were dead. José Arles was dead, too, with a huge gash in his skull that exposed most of his brain. Villota, a close friend of Arles, made a futile attempt to revive him by raising him into a sitting position, whereupon his brain fell out onto the rocks. Villota was too shocked to continue with the rescue efforts.

  Stanley Williams was the only person still alive on the volcanic cone, but he was horribly wounded, with a nearly-severed right foot, a broken left leg, a depressed fracture of his skull, a broken jaw and burns and lacerations over much of his body. Calvache, Mothes, Ordoñez and another rescuer placed Williams in a blanket and, painfully slowly, hauled him down the cone and across the moat. The journey of a few hundred yards took nearly two hours, and throughout that time the volcano continued its ominous rumblings. By the time they arrived at the base of the caldera wall, professional rescuers had reached the scene. Williams was placed on a stretcher, hauled up to the rim of the caldera, and airlifted by helicopter to a hospital in Pasto. Calvache and Mothes continued their search for more survivors, but by 6pm they realised there were none, and they in turn were airlifted off the mountain.