Surviving an Eruption:
Michael Ramsey injured at Mt. Semeru

You could no more expect the volcanologists who attended the International Association of Volcanology and Chemistry meeting in Bali last July not to want to visit local Mt. Semeru, a volcano one island over, than you could expect a baseball fan to turn down an invitation to Yankee Stadium on a trip to New York.

So Michael Ramsey (left), director of the Image Visualization and Infrared Spectroscopy Laboratory and an associate professor of geology and planetary science at Pitt, jumped at the opportunity when he was invited by members of the Smithsonian Institution’s Global Volcanism Program and a team from the Volcanological Survey of Indonesia to accompany them on a regularly scheduled inspection tour.

At 12,000 feet, Mt. Semeru is the largest volcano in Indonesia — in a country with more than 100 volcanoes — and has a history of massive, disastrous eruptions. One, in Krakatoa, which killed tens of thousands in 1883, was the subject of a popular movie, Krakatoa: East of Java. Over the past couple of decades, Mt. Semeru has spewed columns of steam and ash at regular intervals a couple of times an hour.

For the most part, these minor eruptions are nothing more than a natural wonder, so much so that the government created a national park around the mountain, which draws curious tourists and visitors.

Ramsey and his colleagues had no reason to suspect their trip would be any different, and at first, it wasn’t. Then Ramsey felt a small tremor, and saw the earth explode.

Dirt, rocks, steam, ash, and magma—molten rock heated to more than 1,000 degrees—flew everywhere. Ramsey dropped to the ground and covered his head with his camera bag as heated projectiles pelted his body. A minute later, the eruption was over.

Their ordeal, however, had just begun. Two Indonesian researchers were killed immediately in the blast, and Ramsey’s colleagues from the Smithsonian were injured and in need of immediate medical attention.

The group moved to a base camp 2,000 feet down the mountain and radioed for a helicopter for help, but rain and fog made a landing impossible. Ramsey, whose foot was smashed by a flying boulder, performed emergency first aid on one colleague from the Smithsonian, suturing a gaping hole in the man’s shoulder, stabilizing his broken arm, and attending to dozens of smaller burns.

The next day, local villagers constructed a gurney and carried the injured researcher for hours to the nearest town. Ramsey, using a tree branch as a crutch, walked. Two days after the eruption, they finally reached a hospital.

Despite the accident, Ramsey will continue to explore volcanoes personally, and not just from the safety of his laboratory.

“There’s no substitute for being out in the field,” he said.

—John Fedele