Standing on top of a volcano, staring into its crater, defying the danger of being on the threshold of a power strong enough to destroy all that lies in its path.
That is the risk that ASU professor and volcanologist Stanley Williams took Jan. 14, 1993 when he ascended Galeras, a volcano that looms over the town of Pasto in Colombia.
Williams was at Galeras that day with 12 of his colleagues and friends. The Colombian government had asked them to visit the volcano to determine whether danger was imminent; They discovered it was.
Advancing Danger
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In 1985, two major natural disasters occurred: an earthquake killing more than 20,000 people in Mexico City, and the eruption of Nevado del Ruiz, which killed more than 23,000 in Armero, Colombia. These events prompted the United Nations to deem the 1990s the International Decade for the Reduction of Natural Hazards. Part of this included the study of 12 volcanoes that posed potential danger to nearby cities and had not yet been extensively studied by scientists. One of these "decade volcanoes" was Galeras.
After 40 years of silence, Galeras became active in 1988 when several "minor earthquakes" occurred, according to Williams. Its activity continued in 1989 when an ash cloud covered Pasto after more earthquakes and in 1991 when the volcano began to spew out 1,000 tons of sulfur dioxide a day, a sign that the magma beneath the mountain was rising and thus, building pressure. Then, a hardened lava dome was observed coming out of Galeras' crater in late 1991. After growing more than 150 feet in height, the dome exploded on July 16, 1992.
In the six months that followed, activity at the volcano was extremely low, allowing 100 scientists from 14 countries to begin its study during a 3-day conference from Jan. 10 to Jan. 14. Williams was one of them.
"The first three days of that workshop were very successful," Williams said in a recent interview. "That day (Jan. 14) was exciting because I led a dozen colleagues up to the volcano so they could first actually be close to it or up on its rim or down in its crater."
At 1:40 p.m., after about three hours of climbing, studying and collecting samples on Galeras, the scientists were ready to leave.
At 1:41 p.m., Galeras blew.
Ultimate Power
"The sound of the earth's crust was replaced by a thunderous roar as the pressure of gases blew off Galeras' dome and the volcano ejected tons of rocks and ash," Williams recalls in his book about the incident, Surviving Galeras (SG). "The crater was roaring, the volcano was throbbing, and the air cracking with volcanic shrapnel."
While some of Williams' colleagues and friends were instantly turned into vapor or killed by hurling rocks, he and others ran.
" 'Hurry up! Get out!' I shouted," Williams writes in SG. "I flew down the slope, my only impulse to put as much distance between me and the crater as possible."
He did not get far. Williams was first hit just above his let ear with an orange-sized rock. The blow, strong enough to lodge several bone fragments into his brain, knocked him a few feet over and down.
Still able to run, Williams rose and continued his flight.
"I managed to run a few more yards before a barrage of rocks cut me off at the legs, knocking me once more to the ground," Williams writes. "Rolling on my side, I looked down. A bone protruded from my lower left leg, poking through my torn, smoldering pants. Another projectile had nearly severed my right foot at the ankle; my boot dangled by a skein of tendons and flesh."
Although much of his body was on fire, his head leaking blood and brain fluid, and his right leg almost completely destroyed, Williams is able to recall how he felt.
"I stared at my mangled legs and thought it odd that I didn't feel more pain," he writes. "As I lay there, with rocks exploding around me, I felt as if I were gazing at myself from afar, almost as if I had floated into the air and was observing, with an odd detachment, this badly injured man lying on Galeras's flank."
At this point, a nearly incapacitated Williams was able to seek shelter from the deadly rocks. He dragged himself behind a nearby boulder, and although protected from many of the rocks, he still had to dodge the ones falling from the sky.
"I began thinking about my family - my wife, Lynda, my 8-year-old daughter, Christine, and my 5-year-old son, Nick," Williams writes. "I told myself that I didn't want to die, that I wasn't going to die, and that I was going to make it off the mountain and return home to Phoenix."
Williams found it difficult to concentrate on these thoughts when he did not know the status of his friends and colleagues.
He writes, "I was overwhelmed with grief and confusion. How could anyone have survived?"
Man, Volcanologist, Teacher
Born in Joliet, Ill. to an engineer and a junior high school teacher, Williams grew up "in the good old days," when he played with neighborhood boys in a nearby forest, "building tree forts and sloshing around in mud and water."
Williams first became interested in volcanology when attending Dartmouth College, where he took a beginning geology course and then a mineralogy class, where his professor showed Williams a rock from an eruption of Mt. Pelée in Martinique that killed over 27,000 people. From that moment on, he was hooked.
Despite the danger of studying active volcanoes, Williams loves the fact that he has worked in 25 countries around the world, exposing him "to all the fun qualities of Japan or Colombia or Papua New Guinea or other extreme places."
Williams also enjoyed leading undergraduate students on their first trips to volcanoes.
"More than a few times I heard students say, 'This is the most exciting thing in my life,' " he says.
Williams has had those same feelings.
"From the moment I first stepped foot on a volcano...I have found it an exhilarating experience," he writes in SG. "I always sense that, despite the barren surroundings, I am perched on a conduit to the most basic energy of the universe, a pipeline to the beginning of the planet. No other place leaves me as keenly aware of man's powerlessness in the face of nature and the inconsequence of a single life."
According to Williams, there are at least 500 million people in the world who live close enough to a volcano to be in danger and therefore, volcanology is highly important. There are more than 300,000 people living near Galeras in Pasto alone. That is what Williams and 12 of is friends and colleagues were doing there.
"Our goal was the same," he writes. "To understand what makes a volcano tick, to forecast eruptions, to save lives. We all wanted to save lives."
The Rescue
It was nearly an hour and a half after the eruption and Williams had worsened.
"The cold was the worst part - a chill that emanated from my very core and spread outward until my entire body shook in an effort to warm itself," he recalls in SG. "Soon, my mind focused solely on getting warm and I fantasized about being in bed under a pile of blankets."
Not many would have even thought about going to Galeras soon after the eruption, the biggest the people of Pasto had seen in five years. But Marta Calvache (one of Williams' grad students) and Patty Mothes (a long-time friend) enlisted three hesitant men to help in a rescue effort. Together, they drove to Galeras.
"I just felt it was my destiny to go and get Stan and the others out of there," Mothes says.
When the rescuers, who were later joined by the Red Cross, arrived at the site of the eruption, they first rescued scientist Andy Macfarlane, who was in shock, but not fatally wounded.
After that, it was Calvache who spotted Williams, motionless and covered with ash.
"I heard Marta calling my name and looked up to see her hovering over me," Williams writes. "My relief was indescribable. Once I saw her, I knew I was going to get off the volcano."
Williams was first treated at a downtown clinic where 31-year-old Porfirio Muñoz performed a 3-hour brain surgery on him, which went well.
Williams later found out that "one of the large skull fragments was lodged less than an eighth of an inch from the sigmoid sinus, which functions much like a vein. Had it been cut, I would have been dead in a matter of minutes."
Williams' injuries were extremely severe and had to be treated over the course of two years. The injuries include a nasty head wound, a broken nose, a broken jaw, deafness in his left ear, partially detached retinas, a broken back and a shattered right leg. One of the gravest injuries was the damage to his right leg. It took numerous unsuccessful operations and failed techniques before a Russian device, known as "The Birdcage," restored his leg, allowing him to walk normally.
Despite this success, Williams would never be the same.
A Changed Man
Although he went through 17 surgeries to repair his broken body, the blow to Williams' head was not completely corrected, nor could it have been. The peach pit-sized chunk of brain that was destroyed caused Williams's personality to change.
"You can't put a brain back together and fix it," he says. "You just have to accept being permanently changed and being a significantly different person. Almost ten years after the eruption, I am still learning ways in which I am different."
Williams says that now he often forgets things, gets confused, has a low level of energy, is physically exhausted because of difficulties he has thinking, is prone to sadness and depression, and easily becomes irritable and angry.
"I am not the same guy who went in there that day," he says. He wrote earlier, "I found myself barking at my wife and losing my temper over the smallest things. Slowly I pushed her away... I wound up getting divorced."
This change in Williams has also affected his professional life.
"Once I was at the top of my profession," he writes. "Conceiving research projects, securing funding for them, pulling them off and writing them up used to be a cinch. Now it's a struggle. Once I saw an open field. Now it seems full of obstacles.
Moving On
Nine people died on Galeras that day. Some were renowned scientists studying the volcano in order to save lives; others were tourists that simply wanted to see what an active volcano looked like.
Williams has returned to Galeras several times since the eruption.
"An important thought was, 'I'm back and I'm not going to let it control my life,'" he says. "It was exhilarating to be there and look at the volcano."
The first time Williams returned, only 18 months after the eruption, he did not go back to the crater.
"As I landed, it began to have very special earth quakes," he says. "It was as if it sensed my return and it reminded me how powerful it was."
Even after all he has been through, Williams does not worry about another eruption taking his life. He knows it is a possibility, but does not let it control him.
"The difference between ordinary people and volcanologists is that, with us, the appeal far outweighs the terror," he writes. "Most people flee from erupting volcanoes. We head straight for them."
The accounts and facts in this article were obtained through an interview with Williams and from Surviving Galeras, his 1999 book co-written with Fen Montaigne. The book can be found at Noble Science Library on the ASU campus.
Amanda Myers is the assistant editor of the Web Devil. Reach her at amanda.l.myers@asu.edu.
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