The Last Volcano

by John Dvorak

  And beyond were the other four peaks. Mount Dana also had a summit crater, much larger than the one he was seeing at Pavlof. Pavlof Sister was actually a large subsidiary cone of Pavlof, glistening with ice. It had no summit crater; instead, a lava plug capped its summit. Much farther away were the symmetrical cones of Dutton and Hague, less distinct because of their distances, though their slopes, too, were regular and smooth.

  A week or so before they departed, Jaggar was standing alone on a grassy plain looking at the five peaks, a part of the world that, even today, few people have ever seen. As he watched, only the summit of Pavlof puffed steam occasionally. As he stood there, he removed his hat, awed by the silence of these five great sentinels that had withstood for many centuries Arctic gales of the Bering Sea. Some day, as he knew, each one would burst as a fiery furnace.

  As stated at the beginning of the chapter, the work of a volcano observatory follows many different lines of research simultaneously, as was seen with Jaggar’s investigation of the lava lake, the flowing of lava during eruptions of Mauna Loa, the recording of earthquakes, and the episodic rise and fall of the ground surface as molten lava moved within and erupted from Kilauea. And then there are the unexpected benefits. Foremost among these, during the first two decades that the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory existed, was the prediction of tsunamis.

  Commonly, though mistakenly, called a “tidal wave”—it has nothing to do with the twice daily rise and fall of the sea—a tsunami is a series of giant sea waves, caused by an earthquake or a volcano explosion, that run up and inundate a coastal area, sometimes for many miles, causing wide-spread destruction and often death. One of the most deadly such disasters in recent history occurred in 2004 in the Indian Ocean when nearly 300,000 people were drowned by such a series of waves. The association of tsunamis with major earthquakes—such as the association of the 2004 tsunami with a major earthquake in Sumatra—has been known for much of history. What was not clear at the beginning of the 20th century was whether earthquakes were the primary cause of tsunamis—and whether the arrival times of giant sea waves at points far across an ocean could be predicted.

  As to the cause of most tsunamis, the debate was greatly stirred after the Great Meiji Sanriku tsunami of 1896. A slight shaking was felt along the northeast coast of the main island of Honshu at 7:32 P.M. on June 15 of that year. But such slight shakings had been common for the last few months, and so the people who were living along the coast and who, as circumstances would have it, were at festivals celebrating the return of soldiers from the Sino-Japanese War, paid no attention to the possibility of a tsunami. Thirty-five minutes after the ground shook slightly a giant wave did roll in and more than 20,000 people drowned. It remains the deadliest tsunami disaster in Japanese history, still eclipsing the 15,550 people who drowned along the same section of coastline by the tsunami produced by the strong ground shaking during the Tohoku earthquake in 2011.

  But why had such a devastating tsunami been produced in 1896 by such slight ground shaking? That question continued to puzzle Japanese scientists. Geologist Bunjiro Koto at the University of Tokyo suggested that an undersea volcanic explosion had caused the ground shaking and produced the tsunami. His suggestion was inspired by the 1883 explosion of Krakatoa that produced a 100-foot-high sea wave that drowned more than 36,000 people. Others suggested that it had been a coincidence that an earthquake had been felt about half an hour before the tsunami because many other earthquakes had already occurred without producing such giant waves. In that case, so it was suggested, what had drowned so many people in 1896 was a rogue wave produced by a violent windstorm out in the Pacific Ocean. Such a wave had been produced, so Fusakichi Omori at the Imperial College in Tokyo argued—he was the man who Jaggar had visited in Japan—because an ocean had a natural frequency of oscillation that allowed seawater to slosh back and forth like a “fluid pendulum.” If that was the case, then there was little hope that anyone would ever be able to predict tsunamis. But there was another possible explanation.

  Akitsune Imamura, who was also at Imperial College, suggested the 1896 tsunami had been caused by an earthquake. Moreover, he suggested—and this was still a radical idea—it was not the ground shaking that had produced the tsunami, but a permanent uplift or drop of the sea floor. He also suggested that a tsunami is a special type of ocean wave, one that propagates at an incredibly fast speed across an ocean and that can barely be detected in deep water, but becomes larger and more powerful when passing through shallow water and approaching shore.

  If Imamura was right, then, because of the simple fact that earthquake waves travel through the solid earth faster than waves through an ocean, it should be possible to predict, after a seafloor earthquake was detected, when a tsunami should arrive. The question was: Who might provide such a prediction?

  The 1896 Great Meiji Sanriku tsunami did impact the Hawaiian Islands. It swept away the wooden wharfs at Kawaihae and Kailua on the west side of the island of Hawaii, even though both wharfs had withstood the impact of storm surges for many years. At Hilo, it entered the bay as an eight-foot-high surge of water, pulling small fishing boats from their moorings and swamping them and washing cargo ready for shipment off a wharf.

  And this was not an unusual event. A dozen such waves had come into Hilo Bay in the 19th century. And each one had arrived unexpected.

  The highest wave swept in on November 7, 1837. Captain James Lawrence was on his whaling ship Admiral Cockburn in Hilo Bay at the time of the tsunami. He saw the water retreat and “a great part of the bay was left dry.” Then, to his amazement—and horror—a giant wave washed over his ship. He survived, as did his ship. Afterwards, he told his officers and crew that “he could drink no more, swear no more and chase whales no more on the Sabbath.” One person decided to record the height of the wave where it came on shore by climbing a coconut tree and driving a ship’s spike at the high-water mark. The spike was twenty-one feet above sea level.

  All of this points to the importance of knowing in advance when such waves would arrive. Though he had no forethought that his work at Kilauea might confirm or refute Imamura’s idea that tsunamis are caused by large undersea earthquakes, in hindsight, it is clear that Jaggar was ideally situated to test those ideas. He was located in the center of the Pacific Ocean, and so he would have direct knowledge when such waves passed through the Hawaiian Islands. He also had the equipment that could record distant earthquakes—the Bosch-Omori seismograph.

  An earthquake sends out a wide variety of waves. The body waves—that is, the familiar P- and S-waves—cause the ground to shake back and forth several times a second. Because of the rapid oscillation, the energy of body waves dissipates quickly as they travel through the earth. In contrast, surface waves, which, as the name suggests, travel along the earth’s surface, oscillate the ground at much slower rates, say, a few times a second. The energy also dissipates much slower, so that for a distant earthquake, the most prominent seismic wave is that of a surface wave. This means that, after a little experience of looking at seismic records, it is easy to determine whether an earthquake is local—has fast vibrations—or is distant. That is how Jaggar could differentiate between earthquakes that were originating within Kilauea or Mauna Loa and distant earthquakes farther out to sea that might produce tsunamis.

  The first distant event came on September 7, 1918, when, according to Jaggar, “a powerful ‘world-shaking’ earthquake agitated the seismograph.” Eight hours later, a large wave swept into Hilo Bay, tearing fishing boats from their moorings. Four years later, on November 10, 1922, another distant earthquake was “well registered” by the Bosch-Omori seismograph. And Jaggar told Finch that a tsunami might enter Hilo Bay within the next several hours. And one did, causing considerable excitement among local fishermen who were unprepared.

  A pattern had been established. And so, on February 3, 1923, when a third distant earthquake was recorded, a telephone call was made to the Hilo harbormaster informing him to expect a
large sea wave about noon. This time the word went out. The local fishermen took their small boats out to deep water. Families who lived along the coast went to the homes of friends. And the Hilo wharf was cleared of cargo. At thirty minutes after noon, the first wave did arrive, the water rising as high as eighteen feet. It was the world’s first prediction of a tsunami.

  But then came three false alarms. In each case, a distant earthquake was recorded, a warning of a possible tsunami was sent out, then no destructive sea wave materialized. The last one, on March 6, 1929, was particularly vexing. The signature of the earthquake on the Bosch-Omori seismograph was identical to the one recorded in 1923, only larger. That prompted Jaggar to send a radio message to Rear Admiral George Marvell, the Navy commander at Pearl Harbor: “Dangerous earthquake today. Likely to make tidal wave tonight about 10 o’clock. Use every precaution.”

  Marvell immediately cancelled a formal dinner planned that evening for Navy officers and ordered them to gather their crews and return to their ships. All coastal stations were evacuated. The warning also went out to the civilian community. Coastal areas on all the islands were evacuated on all islands. Ships and small boats either sailed for deep water or put out more mooring lines. Then people waited. By morning, no wave higher than a two-foot surge was seen anywhere on the islands. In fact, a person who was among the crowd of excitement seekers waiting for something to happen at Waikiki Beach would record that he saw nothing that night “but an unusually calm surf.”

  There was now public criticism of Jaggar and his tsunami predictions. One newspaper editorial suggested that whatever might be saved by an occasional accurate warning was offset by the mayhem caused by a string of false alarms. But Admiral Marvell saw it differently. He told Jaggar to continue to inform him personally whenever there was a chance of a huge wave. The next warning came on March 2, 1933.

  Again, probably because they were acquainted with Jaggar, especially through his remarkable amphibious car, the local fishermen took their small boats out to deep water. Cargo was removed from the Hilo wharf. And Admiral Marvell gave orders to secure the Navy’s ships. But that is as far as preparations went.

  Jaggar predicted the wave would enter Hilo Bay at 3:30 P.M. A three-foot-high wave did come into the bay at 3:36 P.M. It was too small to do any damage. But, elsewhere, the story was far different.

  On the west side of the island of Hawaii the ocean level dropped until it was eight feet below normal low tide. Then, in a matter of minutes, it rose as a surge ten feet high. Stone walls were pulled down. Boats capsized. Houses were moved and furniture ruined. Automobiles and trucks were flooded so that engines were damaged by sand. Cargo was washed off wharves. And it was the same on the other islands. As a bit of irony, the boathouse in west Hawaii where Jaggar sometimes stored the Honukai was shoved six feet off its foundation.

  Jaggar summarized the event this way: “The seaquake wave of March 2, 1933, successfully demonstrated the methods of scientific forecasting that had been under study at the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory.” The fact that the warning was largely unheeded was probably due to the false alarms of the previous years. That fact that he was able to provide any successful predictions is amazing in view of what he actually knew.

  Communication was certainly not what it is today. Except for 1933, reports that a large earthquake had occurred somewhere in the Pacific, specifying the exact time and place, did not reach the Hawaiian Islands until days after the event. In 1933, a report was received by a news broadcast four hours after the event, describing an earthquake disaster in Japan that had killed more than 1,500 people and had caused a large wave to swamp the coast. Before that information arrived, Jaggar admitted he did not know where the earthquake had originated, speculating that it could be Japan, Kamchatka or the Aleutians.

  And then there was the matter of the false alarms. The seismic event recorded in 1929 was remarkably similar to the one in 1923 that did produce a tsunami because both events occurred in a similar part of Alaska. But the 1923 quake was under the sea, while the one in 1929 was on land, which explains why the later event did not produce a tsunami.

  And there was the question whether an approaching wave was going to be a few feet high or more than ten feet high. That is still a difficult question to answer today, even though there are now many more seismographs operating, the contours of the Pacific floor have been mapped, and instruments specifically designed to record passing waves are in continuous operation on floating buoys scattered across the Pacific Ocean.

  The 1933 disaster should have led to a tsunami-warning system, at least for the Hawaiian Islands, but it did not. Instead, it took another disaster—and many deaths—before one was realized.

  Jaggar was retired and living in Honolulu when the next devastating wave struck the islands. It was April 1, 1946, and a huge earthquake had shaken southern Alaska. The first seismic wave of the quake reached Hawaii and was recorded on the Bosch-Omori seismograph at 2:06 A.M. It was more than five hours before someone arrived at the volcano observatory to begin the daily work, which included examining the seismic record. By then, the tsunami produced by the Alaskan earthquake had already swept across the Pacific Ocean and slammed against the Hawaiian Islands.

  The wave height reached thirty-six feet on Oahu and thirty-three feet on Maui. In Hilo Bay, it rose to an astonishing fifty-five feet. A total of 159 people drowned. Buildings were destroyed. Cars and trucks were swept away. Ships were heavily damaged.

  Damage also occurred elsewhere in the Pacific. Destructive waves ran up beaches at Coos Bay, Oregon, and Half Moon Bay in California. Similar waves swept onto the Marquesas Islands of French Polynesia and along the coast of Chile.

  Because damage was so widespread, in 1949 the world’s first tsunami warning center was established on Oahu. It traces its origin to the telephone call Jaggar made in 1923 to the Hilo harbormaster warning him of the possibility of a devastating wave.

  The 1920s was a period of accomplishment for Jaggar. It began with revealing the episodic rise and fall of the surface of volcano as molten rock was supplied to, then removed from the lava lake. It continued with following the progress of the 1926 eruption of Mauna Loa. Then an unexpected transfer of the volcano observatory to the United States Geological Survey opened to door to a greatly expanded program of volcano research. And that led him back to Alaska for two summers. He built the world’s first two practical amphibious vehicles. He hired more people to work at Kilauea. He purchased more scientific equipment, especially seismographs, some of Omori’s design and some of his own. And better topographic maps were being made of the island of Hawaii.

  And, then, it all came to a halt.

  The economic depression, which, in part, was precipitated by the crash of the New York stock market in October 1929, was felt in full force by Jaggar four years later. To deal with the worsening economic situation, in 1933, the newly elected president, Franklin Roosevelt, started many new government programs. He also curtailed many existing ones. One of those that was cut severely was the volcano program. In 1933, the budget for volcano research was reduced by half. In 1934, it was eliminated entirely.

  The work in Alaska ended. The volcano observatory at Lassen Peak in California was closed and Finch joined the growing number of unemployed. The volcano observatory in Hawaii was also to be closed. It then had six employees, including Jaggar. The other five did lose their jobs. Jaggar would also have lost his job and the observatory would have closed if circumstances did not intervene.

  The intervention came from the superintendent of Hawaii National Park, a former North Carolinian, Edward Wingate. In 1921 Wingate had scored the highest on a civil service exam for civil engineers. That allowed him to choose any position then available. He looked at the list and chose what he thought would be the most exciting one—working with Jaggar at Kilauea. In 1931 he took the position of park superintendent. Three years later, when it looked like the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory would be closed, Wingate contacted his father-in-
law, Shelby Singleton, a prominent Chicago lawyer, whose childhood friend was Harold Ickes, now the Secretary of Interior. It was through this fortunate trail of political connections that, on July 1, 1935, the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory became part of the National Park Service and Jaggar was given the new position as park volcanologist.

  Admittedly, the volcanic activity in Hawaii was much less during the 1930s than it had been during the first twenty years the observatory had existed. Jaggar termed it simply: Kilauea “went to sleep.”

  He retired on July 31, 1940. On that day, as he recorded it, “the whole Park gang” came to his office with drinks and ice for a farewell party. The next day he went to Hilo and sailed the Honukai around Hilo Bay. The remainder of his life would probably have been one of writing scholarly papers. But, then, the Second World War began.

  *Mendenhall and Jaggar had met in 1896 when both men were doing graduate studies at Harvard. Mendenhall’s interest in Alaska began two years later when he was attached to a military expedition that explored a vast area east of Cook Inlet. Ever since, he was anxious for the United States Geological Survey to support someone to work in Alaska.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  A FORGOTTEN LEGACY

  The Jaggars moved to Honolulu on Oahu, as the University of Hawaii had appointed him to a professorship that he would use to write about his years studying volcanoes. Leaving their house on the edge of the lava lake, the Jaggars built a new house near the university. The ground floor had a single large room. To one side were a kitchen and a small dining area. A single bedroom was upstairs. To one wall of the bedroom Jaggar nailed a ladder. At the top of the ladder was a trapdoor that led onto a flat roof where he mounted a telescope. They spent many of their evenings sitting on the roof looking through the telescope at the moon or simply gazing at the night sky.