The Volcano Doctor

Over the pleasant city of Cartago in Costa Rica towers 11,260-ft. Irazu, the only mountain in the world that has its own cabinet minister and a private retinue of physicians. Irazu has rated such attentions since March 13, 1963, when it started spouting enormous clouds of hot ash and became the country's top menace and tourist attraction (TIME, Jan. 17). Sightseers can park near the lip of the crater and actually stare down into the billowing pit. Usually the prevailing wind blows the ash away from the spectators, but last week Irazu took antitourist action. With a sudden, violent explosion it lashed out at its admirers with a hail of ash and a shower of red-hot rocks that killed two and seriously injured ten.

No one was less surprised by this than Irazu's chief physician, Volcanologist Haroun Tazieff, who was hired by .the Costa Rican government to study Irazu and try to predict its tantrums. Fearing exactly the kind of explosion that occurred last week, he urged that tourists be barred from the crater. Now the authorities have closed the tempting road to the summit.

Into the Crater. Dr. Tazieff was born in Warsaw of Russian parents, lives in Paris and is a Belgian citizen. A geologist by training, he got hooked on volcanology in 1948 when he was working in Katanga and got a telegram telling him to investigate an eruption near Lake Kivu. He found Mount Kituro blasting furiously, but descended alone into the crater with only a handkerchief tied over his face. The volcano stepped up its action, attacking him with poisonous fumes and great gobs of molten lava. He barely managed to struggle out of the crater alive. "I found the phenomenon extremely spectacular," he says, "and also interesting. It attracted me very much."

Tazieff lectures on his esoteric specialty at the University of Brussels, but drops his regular work whenever he gets a chance to confront an active volcano. Protected by fiber-glass armor that can deflect a molten bomb weighing 100 Ibs., he carefully stalks into the craters, sometimes close to the roaring throats, and plants seismographs to measure the heartbeat of lava rising deep under the mountain. He samples gases with little glass tubes poked into hot ash, studies the unstable build-up of fresh cinders. So far, Tazieff has escaped without serious injury.

Last month, along with five other Belgian and French volcanologists, Dr. Tazieff made an intimate study of Irazu, which staged several fine explosions for their benefit. There was nothing they could do to cure the eruption, of course, but on their recommendation Minister of the Volcano Jorge Manuel Dengo built an armored observatory on the edge of the crater and equipped it with instruments to report earth tremors that might precede an unusually violent outburst.

Mud Floods. Rain is an even greater threat than an eruption, Tazieff has warned. Only last December the flooded Reventado River pushed thousands of tons of volcanic mud onto the out skirts of Cartago, killing 13 people and wrecking hundreds of homes. Now the danger is worse. A thick layer of unstable ash has accumulated in the area between Cartago and the smoking mountain. With the rainy season approaching, it may turn into a slithery morass and, faster than a man can run, slide down the valleys, picking up rocks and trees. The first heavy rain to soak Irazu, Tazieff fears, may well start a giant mudslide capable of destroying Cartago.

Last week the threatened city was a scene of worried preparation. At a cost of $10 million, Volcano Minister Dengo is diverting the course of the Reventado River as it nears Cartago. The upper bed of the river is being cleaned out to reduce the amount of ash that a flood can pick up. Sentries watch for rain on the mountain and report by radio. Plans have been drawn up for the quick evacuation of the city, and the entire population is being immunized against diseases that follow a disaster.

Tazieff has returned to Paris. There is nothing more he can do except wait for news of his patient, the volcano.

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