|Shorelines May Hold Water| |Paul Kimberly Injured in Volcanic Eruption| |Alumnus Attacked by Shark|  |Martian Meteorite|

Volcanologist Paul Kimberly caught off-guard by eruption

Sunday, August 27, 2000

By Byron Spice, Science Editor, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

As molten rocks the size of softballs rained down around him, geologist Michael Ramsey concentrated on advice he had heard from a survivor of a volcanic eruption seven years before. Drop down. Protect your head

Falling face down on a ridge that shielded him from the direct blast of the 12,000-foot volcano in Indonesia, the 33-year-old volcanologist from the University of Pittsburgh held his camera bag across the back of his head and tried to flick away the hot, glassy pebbles that pelted him and melted into his parka.

The July 26 eruption of the Semeru volcano in eastern Java had caught Ramsey and a small group of fellow volcanologists by surprise. It lasted just 40 or 45 seconds and was by most standards a minor volcanic event, little more than a hissy fit of Nature. Yet when Ramsey stood and surveyed the aftermath, he was aghast at the power Semeru had just displayed.

Two Indonesian colleagues lay dead. An American scientist was unconscious, bleeding and seriously burned. Ramsey and another American were both injured.And, as they learned as they made their way off the mountain, this was only the beginning of their ordeal.

Ramsey, who joined Pitt's geology and planetary science department only three months ago, normally views volcanoes from the safety of his office. A specialist in remote sensing, he is part of a scientific team trying to monitor volcanoes by using a camera aboard Terra, a satellite launched last December as part of NASA's Earth Observing System.

But visiting the sites of active volcanoes -- assessing what might be detectable from space and what might not -- is also part of his job. To date, he's been to about a dozen of them.

His presence atop Semeru, the tallest mountain on Java, was largely a matter of happenstance, however. He had presented a paper to the International Association of Volcanology and Chemistry of the Earth's Interior, which had its annual assembly in mid-July in Bali, just one island over from Java. Afterward, two scientists from the Smithsonian Institution's Global Volcanism Program, Paul Kimberly (BS 1993; Cal State LA) and Lee Siebert, were to accompany a team from the Volcanological Survey of Indonesia on a trip up Semeru and Ramsey was invited along.

Volcanoes are a major concern in Indonesia, an island nation where 216 million people inhabit a land area about three times the size of Texas. There are so many active volcanoes -- more than 130 -- that the exact number isn't known. The nation has had some of the largest, deadliest eruptions in history: Tambora in 1815, leaving 92,000 dead, and Krakatau in 1883, with 36,000 dead.

The remote sensing work done by Ramsey is a tool that scientists hope will enable them to better understand volcanoes, perhaps allowing them to spot warning signs of dangerous eruptions in time to alert surrounding populations.

At Mt. Semeru, the American scientists were accompanying Volcanological Survey staff members on a routine, weekly monitoring tour. Semeru has erupted at least 55 times since 1818, sometimes producing lava flows, pyroclastic flows -- swiftly moving, deadly clouds of hot gas and rock fragments -- and mudflows that have killed hundreds of people over the years.

For several decades, however, Semeru has been a "popper," sending up 1,000-foot plumes of steam and ash every 20 minutes or so. Molten magma isn't visible from the crater, but water seeps down through the crust of rocks and ash at the bottom of the crater until it hits hot rock. The water flashes to steam, building up pressure under the crust until an explosion occurs.

"It's just this big pit and every so often it blows," Ramsey said. A national park surrounds the mountain and, despite the dangers, the crater has become a popular hiking destination.

On July 25, Ramsey and the rest of the group drove to a small village near the mountain and hiked 12 to 13 miles into the park, setting up camp about 1,000 feet above the tree line and 1,000 feet below the summit.

They rose at 2 a.m. the next day to begin their climb, planning to reach the crater by dawn, take some photos, make some measurements, and, after a couple of hours, make their way back to camp. Ramsey, a former Grand Canyon river guide with training in field medicine, usually carries a first aid kit, but he tossed it back in his tent before leaving, figuring he could do without the extra 2 pounds on the short trek. Then he thought better of it and retrieved the kit.

About 20 people were at the summit at sunrise, including Ramsey, the two Smithsonian volcanologists, an Israeli student and four scientists from the Indonesian agency, as well as a couple of porters and a Dutch tourist.

The crater at the top is inactive; the steam-and-ash explosions occur in a smaller crater that is about 200 to 300 feet below the summit and connected to the summit by a curved ridge. After watching three or four eruptions, the group decided to venture down the ridge to get a closer view. The summit was cloudy that morning and the fog became thicker as they reached the active crater.

Ramsey, Kimberly and the Dutch hiker got discouraged and headed back up the ridge. About halfway up, the clouds rapidly dissipated. Someone at the crater called out a good-natured taunt to the departing trio: "Thanks for leaving, guys -- now we've got a clear shot." Kimberly took the hint and began running back to the crater, perhaps 100 feet away.

Ramsey stayed in place fiddling with the telephoto lens on his camera. He felt a tremor beneath his feet. "That's when I got a little nervous because we hadn't felt that before."

That low vibrational motion most likely was caused by fresh magma pushing up through the rock, cracking it. Unlike the usual steam-and-ash eruptions, which are caused by water seeping down from above, this movement originated deep within the volcano, maybe a mile beneath the volcanologists' feet. Perhaps a new batch of gas-rich magma had flowed into the chamber below Semeru; when it mixed with the existing magma, its gas would decompress and begin rising like bubbles in a glass of champagne.

The sudden dissipation of the fog, Ramsey realized later, may have been caused by the heat of the hot magma as it pushed to the surface. But none of that was evident before it was too late. Looking back toward the crater through his camera, Ramsey saw a wall of rock and ash shoot straight up toward the group gathered at the crater.

"I immediately knew we were in big trouble," Ramsey said. The Dutch hiker started to scream. Ramsey shoved him toward a rock outcrop about 20 feet away down the side of the ridge opposite the crater.

Rocks were starting to fall. The rocks -- molten when they hit the air -- were nearly 1,300 degrees Fahrenheit, and Ramsey knew it was important to remain conscious so that he could extricate himself from any scalding masses that struck him. He threw himself to the ground and positioned his camera bag behind his head. Small gobs of glassy stone pelted him, sticking to his clothes until he could flick them off. Something big hit the camera bag, knocking it off his head and out of his hands. Something hit his left boot, melting all its rivets.

And within 40 or 45 seconds -- 60 seconds at most -- it was over. A minute later, Ramsey clambered to his feet. Ten feet away lay a smoldering rock the size of a basketball. He found his camera case, which was melted in one corner. "That's when I started hearing the screaming and wailing," he said.

Kimberly had been knocked unconscious. Unable to protect himself from the nearly molten projectiles, he suffered third-degree burns to his arms and legs.

Making his way to the crater's edge, Ramsey found the two senior Indonesian volcanologists, who had been caught in the direct blast of the eruption. He barely knew them. The man he knew as Willie, named Asep Wildan, and his colleague, named Mukti, were both dead, killed instantly from blows to their heads.

Amit Mushkin, the Israeli student, was largely unscathed, but Siebert, the other Smithsonian scientist, was bleeding from his head and had a large chunk of skin missing between the thumb and forefinger of his right hand.

Ramsey and the other survivors helped get Kimberly to his feet and back to the summit, where two other Indonesian scientists had remained. The Indonesians radioed for help.

Within a half-hour, Kimberly became coherent again and Ramsey assessed his injuries. He had a broken arm and a smashed hand. His pants had burned off and he had third-degree burns on the tops of both thighs. He was bleeding from a rip in the upper left arm of his jacket; closer inspection showed a hole almost the size of a half dollar that continued down to his fractured collarbone.

"I wanted to get him off the summit," Ramsey said, so they headed down the mountain, past their tents to a base camp 2,000 feet below the summit, where there was a small hut and room for a helicopter to land.

As they waited to be evacuated, Ramsey took out two suture kits from the first aid kit he had almost left behind and began to stitch up the gaping wound on Kimberly's shoulder.

"I had learned to do sutures on a big slab of roast beef," he said, but had never done it on a live human being before. "About halfway through, Paul said, 'Are you going to begin soon?' so I guess I wasn't too bad."

By 5 p.m., it was obvious that no helicopter would be coming that day. "None of us got much sleep that night," Ramsey said.

The next morning, word came that a helicopter rescue had been approved, but that clouds and rain would make it impossible.

So villagers, who had hiked up with supplies through the night, constructed a gurney for Kimberly and suspended it by ropes to a single pole supported on the shoulders of two men. The village men were small, skinny and usually barefoot, but they expertly moved Kimberly down the hill, with replacements taking over as each set of porters tired.

Ramsey, his left foot swollen from the impact of the flying rock, limped along in the procession, a tree limb serving as a makeshift crutch. Siebert, who had worked in Indonesia before, took the lead in communicating with the Indonesians and Mushkin aided with Kimberly's transport.

"All of us were kind of the walking wounded," Ramsey recalled, "so we didn't have much energy."

It was about 9:30 p.m. on July 27 before they arrived in the trailhead village of Ranupane, where Kimberly, Siebert, Ramsey and Mushkin piled into an ambulance headed for the next major city, Lumajong. When they arrived about 2:30 a.m., almost two days after the eruption, 30 or 40 reporters greeted them.

Siebert and Kimberly were flown to a hospital in Singapore. Siebert, now back at work at the National Museum of Natural History, declined to be interviewed for this story, explaining, "This tragedy is still much too close at hand for me." Randall Kremer, spokesman for the museum in Washington, D.C., said Kimberly continues to undergo treatment for his burns and is expected to make a full recovery.

Ramsey said doctors in Lumajong found nothing wrong with his bruised foot, though it still bothers him a month later. Covered in bruises, he returned with Mushkin to Semeru to gather up the camping gear. Ramsey then returned to the United States.

Hindsight is 20/20 and Ramsey wishes he and the others hadn't made their trek to Semeru. But he also knows it's not the last time he will visit a volcano.

"You really need to be out there," he said. "It's not enough to look at satellite images on a computer screen."

CSLA GEOLOGY ALUMNUS ATTACKED BY SHARK

ALUMNUS EATS SHARK!!

This is one story that I am thankful to be able to tell and save for my grandchildren. As I look back and reflect on this event, I can’t express how disappointed I was and am about killing this great animal and yet I am so grateful that I came out of this entanglement unhurt.  Sometimes, when someone without any free-diving knowledge and experience asks me about this challenging experience, I ask myself, can this person fathom what I went through at that moment?   I wonder myself and thank God for being with me in that particular moment.

As Nina Kim of the San Diego Union Tribune and Dave Strege of the Orange County Register eloquently described the significant event of the morning of Saturday August 28, 1999 in their publications, I was participating in the San Diego Free Divers Bluewater Spearfishing Meet.  I now humbly describe this event from a diver’s prospective.

I consider myself very lucky to have packed the right equipment and had the right frame of mind to use it when I did to come out ahead in this incident. I am sure that any diver with the experience I have would have reacted the same way.  Additionally, I was diving with a great captain, my friend Danny Oliver (CSLA MS, 1986), the owner of the Blue Job (18 foot boat).  Also, before I left home the previous day, my wife warned me she had heard a news report about sharks being sighted in the area. Then, the night before we left for the dive, I was showing Danny my spear gun (Riffe Islander) and we selected and loaded a shaft -- the ice pick tip used for large fish.  This choice was proved just right for the incident I met the next afternoon.  Just a few weeks before I had welded a rest stop in the middle of the spear shaft to make it easier to load.  All these factors contributed to a successful outcome.

When you are diving with a spear gun this big, it takes a lot of energy and effort to handle it, let alone reload it; therefore, you have to be very selective in the shots you take and also have a keen eye combined with great reflexes.  That morning I saw only one fish worth shooting, a 10 to 15 pound barracuda and Danny saw a 10 pound yellowtail.  Both were too far away to shoot and we had a feeling more yellowtail were running close by.  After several unsuccessful dives in different areas of the Coronado Islands in Baja, California, I was a little frustrated due to the slow day.  Again, I got in the water ahead of Danny.  I remembered him saying, “Go get them, Stewart.  Get them daddies.”  The rest is history.  After five to six dives to approximately 30 feet, I saw the beautiful profile of a large shark in front of me at approximately 35 feet deep.  I think the visibility that day was between 30 to 40 feet.  I decided to surface without creating a panic.  As I surfaced, I called to Danny and told him that a large shark was in the area. As soon as possible, I put my face plate back in the water in order to keep a visual of my surroundings and I began to swim toward the Blue Job.  

When I saw the shark for the first time, my adrenaline kicked in -- that is natural for a diver, especially one that is experienced and has dived with sharks before.  The adrenaline kicked to a higher level when I saw the shark charging at me at about 45^o from the bottom at 4:00 o’clock (if my swimming direction was at 12:00 o’clock). Imagine how long it felt -- the few seconds that it took me to turn my long spear gun toward the charging shark and wait for the right time to take the shot.  All I remember is that I aimed to a wide opened mouth full of teeth coming at me.  Instantly, after I took the shot, the shark jerked to the right and the spear penetrated the gill section and continued all the way to the stomach.  It never crossed my mind that the shot was fatal or paralyzing.  The shark was so close that I had to release the leader line from my gun and swim toward the oncoming Blue Job.  I handed my gun to Dave Oliver, Danny’s brother, and climbed into the boat as soon as I could.  I told Danny and Dave that I had had to shoot the shark in self-defense.  Everything was happening too fast for them to understand what I had encountered and done.  For whatever it’s worth, this is one of the easiest fish I have ever landed.  I did not have to go look for him; he was looking for me!

Even after I was safely on the Blue Job, these guys did not realize what had transpired.  My float did not even move and, according to them, I seemed pretty calm. Danny turned the Blue Job and we headed for my float.  When we came upon the float, I grabbed it and started pulling until the shark became visible.  Everybody in the boat was stunned, including me.  The shark was not dead but was not fighting either -- it appeared that the ice pick was crushing its internal organs when we tugged on the shaft. All of us, including Kyle Oliver (Dave’s 13 year old son who was onboard for the ride) tried unsuccessfully for over an hour to load this beast in the boat.  We did not imagine the type and weight of the shark until we made it back to Shelter Island and ran into Skip Helen, also participating in the Bluewater Spearfishing Meet, who told us that we had a MAKO SHARK.  We were all surprised when the Mako was weighed at the Marlin Club at 426 pounds -- a California record.  We stole the moment.  We were thrilled!

Stewart Graham (BS 1990)

Cal State Alumnus Finds Martian Meteorite

PASADENA, California (CNN 2/4/2000) -- When Bob Verish (Cal State LA – BS 1983) picked up two dark stones on a hike in California's Mojave Desert 20 years ago, the rock hunter didn't realize the rarity of his find. He does now. They represent only the second confirmed Mars meteorite discovery in the United States, NASA scientists announced this week.

Red Planet rocks are extremely uncommon on Earth. More than 20,000 meteorites have been identified, but at most 15 of them came from Mars, according to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.  

The new Mars discovery, officially named the Los Angeles meteorite, consists of two stones weighing 453 and 245 grams (16 and 9 ounces). An analysis by the University of California, Los Angeles, confirmed that the dark volcanic basaltic rocks were from Mars.

After finding the stones, which are basaltic, or volcanic with dark exteriors, Verish placed them in his rock collection. About two decades passed before he looked closely at them again. He stored the rocks in boxes in his backyard.  In October, while cleaning out his collection for rodent nests and droppings, he came across the unusual rocks again.

Verish, who in the meantime had begun to hunt meteorites, immediately noted the dark fusion crust on the rocks and suspected they were meteorites. He cut off small samples of each and took them to UCLA for analysis.

University technicians confirmed the rocks were meteorites in late December. And noting that the samples bore a remarkable similarity to a Mars meteorite found in the Antarctic in 1994, they ordered more tests.   

By January 12, UCLA confirmed the Red Planet origin of the rocks, which Verish has affectionately nicknamed "Miguel" and "Gabriel." 

The Los Angeles meteorite is only the second Mars meteorite found in the United States. The other U.S. find was the Lafayette stone from Indiana, identified as a Mars meteorite in 1931.

Like the Los Angeles meteorite, the Lafayette meteorite remained incognito in a collection for years before it was recognized as a Mars meteorite. In Lafayette's case, it was discovered in the geological collection at Purdue University.

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