Saturday, April 17, 2010

Chaos Under The Bowl Of The Sky

"Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking. We have a small problem. All four engines have stopped. We are doing our damnedest to get it under control. I trust you are not in too much distress." Speedbird 9: Eric Moody, captain of BA Flight 9 over Indonesia, 1982
"If you find yourself flying into a cloud of ash, turn away and get out of there as soon as you can."
"And a lot depends on the wind. I would expect this shutdown to last a couple of days. But if the eruption continues - and continues to produce ash - we could see repeated disruption over six months or so."
Minuscule, volcanic-blasted particles of rock, glass and sand, suspended high above the blast site of Iceland's Eyjafjallajokull volcano in southeast Iceland, placing international air traffic in its own state of suspended animation, awaiting the eventual settling of the cloud of particles threatening to shut down the engines of any plane sufficiently incautious as to stray into its path. Directly at the height of air traffic, precisely in the most-used traffic arteries of international flight. These particles are capable of sandblasting cockpit windows, as evidenced by the singular previous experience in 1982, and of effectively shutting down jet engines sucking the molten, diffused mass of particulate matter into their interiors.

And what about what is occurring on the ground, with a massive glacier - in Iceland's peculiar geological heritage where fire and ice reside in uneasy and occasionally-punctuated companionship - melting, sending meltwater dashing down the mountainous hillsides, into valleys, and flooding villages in the valleys below...?
"We have been planning this trip for 16 months and now a volcano in a place I have never heard of has erupted and spoiled my dream."
"Basically, we're stranded here and a lot of people are angry. I realize it's an act of God. However, it would be nice to have another exit strategy."
Ireland, Lithuania and Norway have opened their airspace, while Austria, Belgium, Britain, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, Latvia, the Netherlands, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland have seen most of their airspace shut down. The cost of these shutdowns are measured at $200-million a day to grounded airlines.

Particulate-laden, volcanic-ash clouds are stretching from the Atlantic to Moscow and from the Arctic Circle to Bulgaria, as smoke and ash continue to spew out of the volcano. Thousands of air passengers across the world are stranded, and air traffic disruption is slated to continue for the present.

Nature can be so inconveniently presumptive.

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