Doubtful Decision-Making at Redoubt

The Big Picture has a great gallery of photos from Alaska's Redoubt Volcano.

Though the above does not mention it, I've been meaning to post on the Drift River Oil Terminal for a while... briefly, it was badly damaged when Redoubt erupted 20 years ago. In their infinite wisdom, they decided to rebuild it...wait for it... in exactly the same place, ignoring the fact that Redoubt is a frequently active and violent volcano. The oil terminal is on the broad plain of the major drainage off the volcano. It's far enough from the vent that it's probably not directly at risk from an eruption, but volcanic mudflows, or "lahars," put the terminal at great risk. It was these lahars that caused the damage in 1989.

The news articles I've seen claim that the dikes protecting the tank farm have held and done the job they were intended to do. That may be true, but I find it hard to reconcile such statements with photos like this from the Alaska Volcano Observatory:Picture Date: March 23, 2009 Image Creator: Read, Cyrus;
Image courtesy of AVO/USGS.Please cite the photographer and the Alaska Volcano Observatory / U.S. Geological Survey when using this image.

...and this:Picture Date: March 23, 2009 Image Creator: McGimsey, Game;
Image courtesy of AVO/USGS.Please cite the photographer and the Alaska Volcano Observatory / U.S. Geological Survey when using this image.

The above picture is much reduced, but if you look carefully, that dark splotch in the middle of the dike that runs from the upper left to lower right, is a place where the lahar has ramped up against it and overtopped it. There's also some overflowing on the back dike, but it's hard to make out in this picture. All that dark watery looking stuff outside the dike is debris flow deposits. I can't figure out how to link to the full-sized pictures, but this search should allow you to find them. Fair warning: they're much scarier in full detail. This was a barely-dodged bullet, and the bullets are still flying.

Now the infuriating aspect of this is that Redoubt has been grumbling for about two months now... plenty of time to prepare. I wouldn't be the first to point out the odd correlation between Bobby Jindal's "something called volcano monitoring" comment and the first hints of restlessness at Redoubt. It's only been over the last couple of weeks that it's been venting major blasts. So how did they do with emptying the tanks? Well, they talked and talked and talked. Finally it was announced Thursday (9 days after the date on the above photos) that a tanker was on its way to empty the tanks on Saturday. Oh, and because of the way the tanks are designed, it's not safe to empty them more than half-way. They might float away if swamped.

Saturday, it was announced that due to a major volcanic explosion, it was unsafe for the tanker to approach the area, and it had been turned around.

There's six million gallons of crude sitting in the path of lahars from a dangerous, active volcano. Looks like the oil's stuck there for the forseeable future. Sounds like a really, really stupid disaster movie, doesn't it?

Stupid? You Betcha!
Disaster? This could make the Exxon Valdez look like patty-cakes.
Movie? Sorry. This is the real world.

Oops, forgot to stick in a link to the article that preciptated this rant...