Details erupt from volcano account

Verna Noel Jones, Special To The News

Published April 25, 2003 at midnight

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Imagine a volcanic explosion so huge - so loud - that you can hear it from the East Coast to the West Coast of the United States. Such was the violent force of Krakatoa, just west of Java in the East Indies, which blew itself into oblivion Aug. 27, 1883.

"It was the greatest detonation, the loudest sound, the most devastating volcanic event in modern recorded human history, and it killed more than thirty-six thousand people," writes author Simon Winchester in his book Krakatoa: The Day the World Exploded. Here's the kicker: Some 40 years after that explosion, the volcanic island, now called Anak Krakatoa (or, child of Krakatoa, began poking up through the ocean again. Every year, it grows higher by 20 feet and wider by 40 feet, and without a doubt it will erupt and devastate again, assures Winchester, a former geologist at Oxford.

Using greatly detailed information drawn from eyewitness accounts, reams of reports and close studies by scientists worldwide, Winchester re-creates the events leading up to and through the disaster.

To help readers understand just what happened, the author opens with great historical and geographical detail. He discusses map-making, as well as the trade routes to the island of Java, once an exotic and distant source of pepper, clove and nutmeg. He delves into the role of tectonic plates in volcanic activity, explaining how two different types of plates collided - one of oceanic basalt, the other loaded with continental crust. He also discusses dubious historic accounts of prior explosions at the site, in A.D. 416, A.D. 535, and A.D. 1680.

Furthering his extensive, exhausting (both in text and copious footnotes) and sometimes excrutiating detail, Winchester devotes several pages to the building of submarine telegraph cables as well as the timely rise of the Reuters news agency, by which information on the eruption was transmitted quickly around the globe.

Finally, by page 208, Winchester spews details of the actual eruption, which lasted for 20 hours and 56 minutes. Sea Captain W.J. Watson, who was closest to the event on his ship Charles Bal, just 10 miles away, reported a "dark rain of rocks." Other survivors marveled at the total darkness of the noon sky, and waves soaring more than 100 feet high - "hundreds of billions of tons of roiling, thundering, foaming green water."

The shock waves created by Krakatoa moved around the globe like ripples on the surface of a pond. On the island of Rodriguez, 2,960 miles away, the natives reported hearing the explosion, which sounded like the distant roar of heavy guns. Tree roots and pumice, a volcanic byproduct, were found washed ashore some 3,000 miles away. Even the temperature of the planet dropped.

Volcanic dust shooting into the atmosphere drifted across the United States and Europe, changing the appearance of the sky. People reported seeing blue moons, blue suns and vivid red twilights. The volcano's effects influenced the artwork of impressionists and landscape painters such as Frederic Edwin Church, whose paintings radiated the drama of the vividly colored skies. In Poughkeepsie, N.Y., firefighters rushed out to battle what they thought was a massive fire, only to discover that it was the blazing red sky they were seeing.

Most surprisingly, the explosion of Krakatoa, which some people believed was a message from an angry god, took on a religious significance on the islands of Java and Sumatra, which then was Dutch-ruled. The Arabs persuaded many to convert to Islam to appease God, who they believed had unleashed this angry event.

In short, Krakatoa is a fascinating story of a world-changing event that could very well happen again. Winchester may have been overexuberant in his effort to leave no stone unturned in telling the story. (If Disney grabs it for an adventure movie, you can bet the details will shrink mightily.)

Nonetheless, for science and nature buffs, the book is valuable in its resourceful analysis of what might have been one of the most startling events of the last 125 years.

Verna Noel Jones is a free-lance writer living in Aurora.

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