Wednesday, August 3, 2011
THEN
On August 3, 1783, Japan’s Mount Asama erupts and for 15 hours, generates pumice falls, lava flows, and pyroclastic flows—flows of rock and gas. Mud flows to a distance of more than 125 miles. The eruption turns out to be the final phase of a three-month long, Tenmei eruption. The devastation brought on by the eruption worsens the already dire famine situation in the surrounding region. Land in Shimano and Kozuke provinces is showered with both ash and volcanic deposits and does not return to prior levels of productivity for four or five years. Many people had already exhausted their food supplies, years before the eruption—which kills as many as 1,500. Many more die in the years that follow.
NOW
On March 13, 2011, two days after the massive Fukushima earthquake and tsunami, Mount Shinmoedake, located on the southern island of Japan, grew active again and started spewing an ash cloud two miles high. The volcano had been active just weeks prior, on Jan. 19, and back in 2009. Whether or not earthquakes of great magnitude lead to an increase in volcanic activity is still unconfirmed. However, Japan’s former chief of volcanology at the Meteorological Agency, Masaaki Churei, found that within a 156-year period—that included four major Japan earthquakes and 13 major volcanic eruptions—12 of those eruptions came within eight years of a great quake.
