Iceland’s volcano double act

Two shows, with two different Icelandic volcano eruptions?

Yep.

Foreign Correspondent on ABC1 looks at Eyjafjallajokull next week, but a doco on SBS goes back to another volcano eruption in Iceland 227 years ago.

ABC: Foreign Correspondent:

In March, an unpronounceable volcano in an obscure corner of the world erupted. And nobody much noticed, apart from Icelanders living near it, and vulcanologists and geologists, who spend their lives waiting for this sort of event.

In April, it erupted again, sending a dense cloud of ash over Europe, causing the biggest shutdown of airspace since World War Two.

Six days, two billion dollars and millions of stranded passengers later, everyone still breathing had at least heard of Eyjafjallajokull, even though most still didn’t know how to say it, let alone spell it.

But what if many of those people didn’t need to miss their flights? What if the airline industry and European regulators made a massive miscalculation? What if people who study these things had been warning the industry for years that they needed to get a better plan for dealing with just such an event – that it was not a case of if, but when.

Next on Foreign Correspondent, Eric Campbell meets the people who say it was no surprise to them when ash from the Icelandic volcano disrupted flights, and it shouldn’t have been to the airline industry either.

They say that for years, they’ve been urging airlines and engine manufacturers to agree on a minimum ash density that it’s safe for jet airliners to fly through. And Icelandic authorities have been warning that even a small volcanic eruption had the potential to close down European airspace, unless better systems were put in place.

But nobody wanted to know. It took a crisis to make them listen.

On his third visit to Iceland, Campbell — who seems to be becoming the ABC’s defacto man in Reykjavik — flies over the still erupting Eyjafjallajokull with writer, filmmaker and passionate lover of volcanoes, Omar Ragnarsson. He’s witnessed 23 erupting volcanoes in his 70 years, and he can’t get enough of them.

He’s praying for another big one, soon at nearby Katla – named after a Viking witch.

Every time I fly over Katla, I speak to her like a woman I speak to her very gently and say please, come now, the good conditions. Do it for me, you are going to do it anyway. Please do it for me.

The rest of the world’s not quite so enthusiastic.

It airs 8pm Tuesday on ABC1.

Meanwhile Iceland’s Killer Volcano airs Sunday May 23 at 7.30pm on SBS ONE.

Last month, Iceland’s Eyjafjallajoekull volcano brought chaos to European skies. More than 100,000 flights were cancelled, with eight million passengers affected.

On Sunday May 23, relive another great volcanic disaster: the eruption of Iceland’s Laki volcano in June 1783 that not only killed hundreds of thousands, but may have also prompted the French Revolution.

Originally made for BBC Two’s Timewatch program, Iceland’s Killer Volcano details how 227 years ago Laki erupted, triggering a disaster of mammoth proportions. A 27-kilometre wide split appeared in the ground and within seven days, more lava would pour onto the Earth’s surface than from any other eruption in recorded history. While the lava killed all in its path, the real problem was the cloud of gas.

Over the next eight months, 122-million tons of sulphur dioxide spewed out of the massive fissure, bringing death to hundreds of thousands of Europeans. Iceland’s Killer Volcano takes the form of a journey, following the cloud on its progress. Computer-generated images recreate the eruption and show how, after first devastating Iceland, the killer cloud smothered Europe. Under it, crops withered while millions of people were struck down with often-fatal bronchitis and asthma. Others suffered blinding headaches and partial loss of sight.

The doco also airs testimonies from those who survived, offering a frightening insight into the human tragedy:
“Farmers have difficulty gathering their harvest, the labourers having been, almost every day, carried out of the field incapable of work, and many die,” writes Hertfordshire poet William Cowper in the summer of 1783.

The killer cloud’s fallout lasted for months: food and water became contaminated and weather patterns changed. That summer was the hottest ever recorded, whilst the following winter was the coldest. French scientists even believe that the resulting famines, long-lasting but largely forgotten, may have led directly to the peasant uprisings that grew into the French Revolution.

And you thought last month’s eruption was big…