Cooling+I+GD

The Control of Nature: Cooling the Lava – I – Garrett Derrah

The precursor to the previous article I have done, The Control of Nature: Cooling the Lava – I is the same gist of a story as the last. As mentioned in the second article, the harbor that was saved in Iceland is the main focus of this article. One of many of the town of Vestmanjaer’s (Vestman Air) volcanoes erupts and threatens the main fishing harbor of the town. This eruption also threatens the houses and communities of Vestmanjaer, but as the Mayor of the town says without the harbor there is no town economy, there is only tourism. As such the eruption catches the interest of Icelandic Physicist’s (who in Iceland always become Geo-Thermal Physicists), American stationed military men, and the mayor himself. Once the severity of the situation was realized these few men began to strategize how to beat the eruption, and stop it from consuming the harbor and their economy. They decided on pumping massive amounts of seawater onto the lava to try and cool it enough to stop progress of the flow. Hiring ships as sort of mercenaries, they battled the lava and eventually cam out on top, saving the harbor. McPhee writes this because of his passion for geology, and he does it so well that this passion is conveyed to the reader, it keeps your interest. As mentioned in my previous article as well, in this article McPhee again uses some of the terminology to capture your interest enough to make you look to outside sources. There is of course the trademark McPhee scramble of the article, where topics seem to change without much warning. Regarding the article however I found it incredibly interesting concerning not only the volcano, but a lot of the history and culture of Iceland.