How I learned to stop worrying and love the volcano

The traffic in Auckland is horrendous on days the volcano does not erupt. When it goes, cars will be useless and evacuation will need to be on foot. But where are the hundreds of thousands of evacuees going to sleep? Have they thought about that? There’s no such thing as a volcanic-ash-safe tent. Maybe there’s a market for one but at the moment, there is nothing available. Volcanic ash turns to cement in your lungs so shelter is essential otherwise you may as well just get obliterated by the base surge and save yourself the exertion of a 6km walk followed by asphyxiation. So I’ve decided to stop worrying and love the volcano. At least it will be an instantaneous, painless death.

The New Zealand government is thinking about these things. A couple of years ago they ran an exercise that simulated a volcanic eruption in Auckland and had Geonet and civil defence making decisions about who to evacuate and when. One scientist at Geonet was designated the “volcano” and this person sent a series of warning signals over a period of weeks and took no part in the decision-making process.

One scary unknown is that no-one knows where the new vent will be. The warning signals Geonet will receive will provide a clue but early on this will have an error in the region of +/- 10-20km. That’s huge. The longer they wait and the more signals they receive, the smaller the error will become. So there’s a tradeoff between evacuating early and a larger number of people, or later and a smaller number of people. But the longer they wait, the more likely the eruption becomes. Civil defence have estimated it will take 2 days to evacuate: 1 to plan and another to move people.

Auckland is home to a third of New Zealand’s population. The natural disaster fund has been depleted by the Christchurch earthquake. There won’t be many tax payers left to pay for the Auckland volcanic eruption aftermath. Hopefully it won’t happen tomorrow.