Word: volcano
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...training, he got hooked on volcanology in 1948 when he was working in Katanga and got a telegram telling him to investigate an eruption near Lake Kivu. He found Mount Kituro blasting furiously, but descended alone into the crater with only a handkerchief tied over his face. The volcano stepped up its action, attacking him with poisonous fumes and great gobs of molten lava. He barely managed to struggle out of the crater alive. "I found the phenomenon extremely spectacular," he says, "and also interesting. It attracted me very much...
Tazieff lectures on his esoteric specialty at the University of Brussels, but drops his regular work whenever he gets a chance to confront an active volcano. Protected by fiber-glass armor that can deflect a molten bomb weighing 100 Ibs., he carefully stalks into the craters, sometimes close to the roaring throats, and plants seismographs to measure the heartbeat of lava rising deep under the mountain. He samples gases with little glass tubes poked into hot ash, studies the unstable build-up of fresh cinders. So far, Tazieff has escaped without serious injury...
Last month, along with five other Belgian and French volcanologists, Dr. Tazieff made an intimate study of Irazú, which staged several fine explosions for their benefit. There was nothing they could do to cure the eruption, of course, but on their recommendation Minister of the Volcano Jorge Manuel Dengo built an armored observatory on the edge of the crater and equipped it with instruments to report earth tremors that might precede an unusually violent outburst...
Last week the threatened city was a scene of worried preparation. At a cost of $10 million, Volcano Minister Dengo is diverting the course of the Reventado River as it nears Cartago. The upper bed of the river is being cleaned out to reduce the amount of ash that a flood can pick up. Sentries watch for rain on the mountain and report by radio. Plans have been drawn up for the quick evacuation of the city, and the entire population is being immunized against diseases that follow a disaster...
Tazieff has returned to Paris. There is nothing more he can do except wait for news of his patient, the volcano...