Big shots — Eruption photographers find their work appearing far and wide

By Jenny Neyman
Redoubt Reporter

Just like any good news photographer, David Wartinbee didn’t waste time celebrating the good luck that put him in the right place at the right time with a camera in his hand as a spectacular mushroom cloud bloomed over Mount Redoubt on Saturday afternoon. He lifted his camera to his eye and started shooting, and didn’t stop until the eruption subsided.

Then he went straight to his computer and filed his images. Later that evening they started showing up in media venues across the state, and soon, the nation and world.

All in a day’s work for an intrepid roving news photographer.

Except Wartinbee isn’t a news photographer. He doesn’t work for a media company or wire service; doesn’t have a press pass or journalism credentials. He’s a biology professor at Kenai Peninsula College’s Kenai River Campus with a recreational interest in photography whose front porch in Soldotna faces out across Cook Inlet, and who happened to be pulling into his driveway just when the mountain started to go off.

But through the power of digital cameras and the Internet, and a world that’s becoming insatiable for instantaneous imagery, Wartinbee and other central peninsula residents were deputized as newshounds that day, by virtue of having cameras, having something spectacular to point them at, and being willing to share.

Shots seen ’round the world

Until Saturday, Mount Redoubt hasn’t been terribly cooperative with photographers in this round of activity. Other than some visible steam plumes, most of the volcano’s many eruptions since March 22 happened at night or were shrouded behind clouds and haze. Redoubt hadn’t produced anything nearly as visually exciting as the iconic image that came from its last eruptive cycle in 1989-1990, when a massive, red-tinged mushroom cloud spread over the mountain April 21, 1990.

Saturday was different. Clouds lifted, the air was clear and the mountain was visible from the Kenai Peninsula around 2:30 p.m.

“Kathy (Wartinbee’s wife) and I came home from whatever we were doing — I think we did something exciting like go to the dump. When we came back and were driving down the road to our driveway, I could see that the mountain was visible, and we hadn’t seen it for days,” Wartinbee said.

He got out his camera to take a few shots, and showed Kathy the spot where he’d taken a photo of Redoubt venting at sunset on March 15.

“I started taking pictures from the deck and as I did I could see something was going on. I said, ‘Hey, there’s a bubble there, and it’s growing.’ And it was growing very fast and we just sat there and watched this thing blossom. We were absolutely dumbfounded by how fast it happened, how fast it went from a little bubble to bang, this thing is there. It wasn’t 15 minutes from the time it started to the time there was this huge, anvil-shaped cloud that was moving toward us,” he said.

Wartinbee’s first shots were dark as the ash cloud was low on the horizon. As it gained altitude it caught the sunlight. By the end of the event Wartinbee had to zoom out to get the spreading ash cloud in the frame.

He went to his computer and downloaded the images, then sent some to the Alaska Volcano Observatory, which posts volcano images on its Web site, www.avo.alaska.edu. The photos are free to download and use, and media sources can print or air them, but must include the photographer’s name. Wartinbee also sent a few to news sources in the state, thinking they might want some eruption shots.

KTUU TV aired one of his photos in its late newscast Saturday, and the Anchorage Daily News ran the same shot in its Sunday edition. From there it was picked up by The Associated Press, a content-sharing membership organization for media outlets worldwide. And that’s where it went — worldwide.

Wartinbee did an Internet search for the photo Sunday, and found it on Web sites for National Public Radio and several newspapers, including The New York Times, The Washington Post and papers in a Syracuse, N.Y., Buffalo, N.Y., Taiwan, South America and Finland. It’s also on the U.S. Army Alaska’s Web site and numerous blog sites — all with his name attached to it.

“I just thought, ‘I wonder how far this thing has gone? If they (the Daily News and KTUU) picked it up, I wonder if anybody else did?’ And it’s amazing how far it’s gone. It’s like, ‘Wow, how many people are interested in this little news item?’” Wartinbee said. “My 15 minutes of fame.”

Jaden Larson, of Nikiski, is enjoying her 15 minutes of fame, as well — one for every year she’s been alive.

The Nikiski Middle School eighth-grader was driving home from a movie in Kenai on Saturday with her sister when they noticed an oddly dark cloud creeping overhead as they were passing The Salvation Army thrift store on the Kenai Spur Highway.

“We just kind of thought it was an odd-looking cloud so I got some pictures because I didn’t know what it was,” she said.

Jaden and her sister continued driving north, but stopped around South Miller Loop to take more photos as the dark ash cloud spread overhead. When they got home, Jaden’s mother called the Alaska Volcano Observatory about the ash fall, and the woman they spoke to encouraged them to e-mail photos that AVO could post on its Web site. Jaden sent about 26 pictures, and eight or nine were posted on the Web site, she said. The photos spread from there.

“We saw one actually on National Geographic, their Web site. It was also on the Anchorage Daily News. We’ve been looking around. It’s pretty cool,” Jaden said. “It’s exciting. My mom was calling all our family to go look. Everyone at school was like, ‘Did you see your pictures online?’”

Jaden said she enjoys photography, and is starting to turn it into a moneymaking endeavor doing portraiture, especially maternity and newborns. She posts her work on her site, www.smilineyesphotography.weebly.com.

“I’ve always liked to take pictures and my parents bought me an expensive camera so I’ve been doing more of it,” she said.

Jaden said she likes portraiture, and hadn’t considered going into news photography in the future, which is still a long way off, considering she’s in middle school. But if she ever does, she’s already got a widely circulated breaking news shot to her name.

For Wartinbee, Saturday fulfilled a dream he’s long had — to see a volcanic eruption in person.

“I’ve seen pictures from years ago, and a friend from up here in Alaska sent me ash in ’89, and I’ve always wanted to see one,” he said.

Now he’s not only got the memories and photos to prompt them, he’s also got some notoriety to go with the experience.

“One of the blogs (that posted his photo) said, ‘Beautiful picture by David Wartinbee.’ Well, that’s cool. Thank you very much.”

Environmental concern over Drift River spill potential grows

By Naomi Klouda
Homer Tribune

A tank farm at the base of Mount Redoubt containing 6.2 million gallons of crude continued to raise concerns this week, while officials formed a unified command to react if volcanoic ash and melting glacial ice sent floods down the Drift River plain.

Fearing risk of an oil spill in Cook Inlet during this period of eruptions, Cook Inletkeeper Director Bob Shavelson went to the Coast Guard’s boss at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

Shavelson’s letter to U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano urged her to order Cook Inlet Pipeline Co., to remove the 6.2 million gallons of oil at the Drift River Terminal at the base of the erupting Mt. Redoubt volcano until conditions improve.

“We are writing to ask you to take swift action to protect Alaska fisheries and the countless people they support from the threat of a major oil spill in Cook Inlet, Alaska,” Shavelson wrote. He described the precarious situation of the terminal’s location at the base of Mount Redoubt with the volcano erupting, sending mud, water and debris flowing down the Drift River.

“This scenario did not unfold overnight. Similar events transpired during the 1989-90 eruption of Mt. Redoubt. In the current instance, the Mt. Redoubt volcano has been in a heightened state of seismic activity since late fall of 2008. Since that time the DFT operator — Cook Inlet Pipeline Company… has refused to release to the public information on the facility’s Volcano Readiness Plan and the volume of oil remaining in the facility’s tank farm, citing Homer Security Act exclusions,” he wrote.

The Coast Guard backed the company’s decision to not reveal how much crude was stored in the Drift River tanks, even though it’s now established policy for tankers in Prince William Sound to release their tank volume information.

The situation boils down to two questions, Shavelson said. “Why was Chevron hiding behind façade of the Homeland Security Act? (And) why don’t our laws and rules accommodate a worse-case scenario in places where we know the risk is high?”

The Coast Guard has regulatory power over Cook Inlet Pipeline Co., said spokesperson Sara Frances. “We have the authority, if there is a significant threat to the environment, the Coast Guard can direct them to remove oil or suspend operations,” she said.

The Coast Guard did not ask the company to suspend operations or move the fuel. Instead, in a press conference Monday, Coast Guard officials joined with terminal owners and the Department of Environmental Conservation to form a combined command to pool spill resources and expertise.

“This is an ongoing operation, and granted it exists at the base of a volcano, but they have the containment in place, they have contingency plans, so at this time we don’t feel it’s necessary to make them remove the oil,” Francis had said last week. “In any case, it’s not safe to allow a vessel in to do the removal, or we don’t know if it’s safe because debris and mud slides have occurred, and the tanker could be damaged.”

This could also risk a spill, she said.

After Thursday and Friday blasts from Redoubt, the company released a statement saying the engineer who designed the dike had performed an aerial inspection of it.

“And (he) is confident the dike remains sound. He and a CIPL engineer are scheduled to fly out to Drift River Terminal to continue assessments as soon as ash clears and weather permits,” the statement read.

CIPL is developing plans to remove debris and clear the road to the safe haven and the heliport as the first step of action. Clean up of the outbuildings will follow.

“The initial goal is to prepare the facility to load a tanker as soon as is safely possible,” it read. By Monday, the company was holding firm on this decision, with DEC and Coast Guard collaboration.

The Coast Guard plans to perform tests at the loading platform and will advise CIPL of the results. These tests determine the level of debris and depth of the water and will decide when it is safe to allow a tanker to enter the area.

Not only is the terminal of concern, but also a 42-mile pipeline on the west side of Cook Inlet that carries the crude from oil drills to the terminal, Shavelson said.

“Certainly we are aware of the threat to the environment, but there’s also the issue of commerce and jobs, as well as products to Alaska residents that come from oil,” Francis said.

The terminal is made up of seven tanks, with a maximum capacity of 277,000 barrels, Francis said. The facility includes buildings for workers and a platform leading two miles from the terminal to the dock where crude is loaded onto tankers.

The facility was built in 1967-68 on land Chevron purchased from the Kenai Peninsula Borough. Environmental protections and processes were not yet developed to regulate the facility during the time of its construction. According to the EPA, it operates on two clean water discharge permits that require renewal every five years.

After Redoubt blew in 1989-90, the company installed a dike for flood protection. Francis said the engineering work on the dike won a design award.

So far, the dike has held, but buildings at the terminal experienced flooding after the Thursday morning blast unleashed lahars, landslides of wet volcanic debris running down the side of a volcano. Shavelson, who said he has been to the facility, said he is not reassured by the positioning of dikes. The power of nature has proven stronger than man-made innovations.

“And you can’t lose sight of the fact that the public was denied information before the situation got into crisis mode,” he said.

When viewing the terminal, Shavelson said it is surrounded by a broad flood plain.

“I also see the force of nature and I think we can look at Katrina and any number of instances where it is no match for nature’s force. A lahar can dig a new channel, moving directly at this terminal. The situation can change rapidly. We’ve been extremely lucky.”

Cook Inlet does not have the capacity to deal with a spill potentially 6 million gallons strong, he said.

Plugged In: Don’t let Redoubt’s ash be downfall of electronics

Before concluding our series about cost-effective computer upgrades, here’s a brief word about dealing with the byproducts of our namesake across Cook Inlet, whose unpredictable geological mutterings are likewise kicking up some dust on the central Kenai Peninsula.

Volcanic emissions are potentially damaging to almost any mechanical or electrical device. Damage can occur in several ways. Although light traces of ash are not a problem, it’s wise to remember that local volcanic ash is an industrial-grade abrasive, which, in sufficient quantities, can abrade and mechanically damage engines, bearings, fans or any other rotating or mechanically actuated devices.

This can quickly cause major computer failures. For example, if the bearings on your CPU’s cooling fan fail, either your computer will shut down almost immediately or your CPU will basically suffer catastrophic heat stroke within a few seconds. Modern processors really do put out enough heat to cook themselves unless constantly and efficiently cooled. In addition to general abrasion of moving parts, other electronic devices like printers, scanners and photocopiers are highly vulnerable to mechanical scratching of interior parts and can become quickly and permanently unusable unless covered and cleaned with compressed air. Don’t try to wipe the dust off such parts and surfaces — blow it off.

Volcanic ash can also damage electronics because it’s electrically conductive, which can cause short circuits. It’s also chemically corrosive due to sulfur oxides which, when combined with atmospheric water, hydrolyze into sulfuric acid, among other noxious chemicals. That’s the same process that results in long-term toxic acid drainage from open-pit mines and mine tailings exposed to oxygen.

Even if abrasion, corrosion or short circuits don’t get you, and even if the ash doesn’t clog your computer’s cooling fans, accumulated ash and other dust is a good heat insulator, causing electronic devices to retain heat, sometimes to the point that the device fails.

I have lost high-end Western Digital Raptor hard disks because I forgot to take a computer outside every few months and thoroughly blow out any and all dust, including dust hiding on the bottom of exposed hard disk circuit boards. The older, 36-gigabyte Raptor hard disk ran pretty warm even when everything was being cooled properly. That disk didn’t have a chance when its circuit board had a nice warm insulating layer of dust. Redoubt’s ash falls will greatly increase the need for regular internal cleaning.

What to do? Appropriate precautions are quite straightforward. Monitor the Alaska Volcano Observatory’s Web site, www.avo.alaska.edu, throughout the day and evening so you’re informed about any explosive ash events and the probable trajectory for any ash that might be ejected over the next 24 hours. You can’t predict whether there will be ash at any given time but you can predict where any emissions will travel on the winds over the next 18 to 24 hours.

When there’s any chance of an ash fall coming down over your area, shut down all of your electronic equipment immediately. Also shut down any uninterruptible power supplies or other battery-operated devices to avoid possible short circuits due to conductive ash. Unplug them from the wall if you don’t have high-grade surge protectors installed. If there’s a power loss, then there’s also the possibility of damaging voltage surges when electrical power is restored. Homer Electric Association’s state-approved tariffs provide that you, the end consumer, are responsible for preventing surge damage and that HEA is not liable.

If possible, keep dust from infiltrating into your premises. Seal leaky windows with wide masking tape. Prevent ash from being tracked into your house and workplace. Put extra filters on any air intakes. For example, I put some regular furnace filters in front of the normal dust filters in my office’s air-handling system. This should provide an easily replaced second line of defense against ash being sucked into my building and being uniformly distributed by the heating system. Also consider shutting down your air-handling systems if you’re present during the day, or setting them so low at night that they’ll not activate very much, if at all, throughout the night.

Covering all electronic and sensitive mechanical equipment is obvious. For more expensive or sensitive devices, I have been fully covering the top and sides of each individual device with a 33-gallon trash bag and then covering the entire area with large, heavy-duty plastic drop cloths bought at Trustworthy Hardware. That gives me a second layer of protection. Ash slides easily, so I have been turning up the edges of the drop clothes to prevent ash from sliding off them on to whatever I am trying to protect.

You’ll need to internally clean any ash or dust regularly. Even if you’re not in the path of an obvious ash event, there’s enough circulating ash that your computer will build up a damaging layer of heat-insulating internal dust more quickly than usual. The best way to clean this dust is to buy several cans of compressed nitrogen or dried air. These are available locally at Three Bears, Save-U-More and other stores.

Unplug your computer or printer, first noting and marking where each cable attaches so that you’ll be able to reassemble the computer without any configuration problems. Then, take the entire system outside, remove each of the sliding side panels and thoroughly blow out any and all dust. In addition to obvious general dust, take particular care to clean the system board, the underside of any hard disks, all fan blades and fan housings, all power supply openings, and the air spaces between the fins on the coolers on the CPU, the video card and any smaller fans on the system board. Repeat regularly while Redoubt’s dust is floating about.

Local attorney Joe Kashi received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from MIT and his law degree from Georgetown University. He has published many articles about computer technology, law practice and digital photography in national media since 1990. Many of his technology and photography articles can be accessed through his Web site, www.kashilaw.com.

Borough is ready for rumbles — Emergency management team keeps tabs on Redoubt eruption

By Jenny Neyman
Redoubt Reporter

Scott Walden usually gets up at 4:30 a.m. He was about ready to head to bed around 10 p.m. Sunday night. But when you’re the coordinator of the Kenai Peninsula Borough Office of Emergency Management and a volcano starts erupting across Cook Inlet, sleep can be hard to come by.

After three months of on-and-off rumbling, Mount Redoubt finally made good on its threats. The volcano began a series of eruptions at 10:38 p.m. Sunday night, followed by others at 11:02 p.m., 12:14 a.m. and 1:39 a.m., according to the Alaska Volcano Observatory. The largest blast of the morning occurred at 4:03 a.m. Monday, sending an ash cloud more than 60,000 feet — 12 miles — into the air. Another large eruption occurred at 7:41 p.m. Monday, sending another ash plume 60,000 feet into the air.

Walden’s work cell phone, a 24-hour necessity for occasions such as these, started ringing between 10 and 10:20 p.m. Sunday, he said, when it became clear Redoubt was ready to do more than just rumble.

With that, the borough’s Office of Emergency Management was in motion.
Built in 2006, the borough’s Emergency Management Center on Willow Street in Soldotna is a self-contained, state-of-the-art facility that serves as incident command center when a natural disaster or emergency strikes — be it a flood, wildfire or volcanic eruption.

It’s a huge step up from the trailer behind the Borough Building OEM used to inhabit, Walden said. Now there’s the necessary space, equipment and facilities to do what needs to be done in times of emergency.

For the most part, that’s gathering and distributing information, Walden said.

“Our job mainly is to coordinate information to get accurate information out,” he said. “We don’t create the information so much as contribute to the creation of it.”

OEM is the borough’s link to the agencies and experts monitoring the situation — in this case, primarily the Alaska Volcano Observatory and the National Weather Service. OEM also is the point of coordination between Anchorage, the Matanuska-Susitna Borough and any other areas of the state facing the same situation, and the multitude of departments, organizations and agencies that have a hand in weathering the storm — the Federal Aviation Administration, National Guard and Alaska Department of Transportation, to name a few.

It’s a two-way interface, with OEM getting updates from the volcano observatory and the weather service on eruption activities, ash cloud trajectory and weather forecasts, and being expected to return the favor if the borough has any information to report, such as ash fall observations.

“We get a lot of e-mails from people saying ‘Redoubt is erupting, there’s ash fall in Safeway parking lot.’ And I go and look, if need be,” Walden said. “We got reports of ash fall here around 2 o’clock (a.m.). I looked again, and of course it wasn’t happening.”

In a situation like Redoubt that’s happening beyond the borough’s boundaries, OEM’s main role is to disseminate information. OEM gathers updates on volcanic activity and ash fall advisories — basically, everything everyone needs to know — posts them to the borough’s OEM Web site, e-mails them to an extensive list of contacts in the media and community, updates the borough administration and department heads, the school district, hospitals, service areas, emergency response agencies, maintenance departments and a long list of others across the borough that most people wouldn’t even think of. But OEM does.

“If there is a really bad situation, we’ll let everybody know what’s going on,” Walden said.

The OEM office is staffed 24 hours a day for the duration of an emergency and has different levels of response it can escalate to, up to having 30 or 40 people working around the clock, with 100 extra phone lines patched in and a chaplain at the ready for the community, if need be.

The Redoubt eruption had staff at the lowest level of response, Walden said. Extra personnel were brought in to answer phones, which were ringing off the hook for about 40 minutes when power to all Homer Electric Association customers across the peninsula — 28,000 meters — went out around 8 a.m. Monday. Though it was just a coincidence, people assumed it was caused by the volcano erupting, Walden said.

Joe Gallagher, spokesman for Homer Electric Association, said the outage was caused by an unknown problem with the transmission line between Anchorage and the peninsula. Engineers were working Monday to determine what exactly happened, Gallagher said.

“We don’t have any reason whatsoever to link this to the ash fall,” he said.
Heavy ash fall could potentially cause a problem if it accumulated on power lines, transformers or electric facilities, Gallagher said, but that would only cause a localized outage.

“We’ve had experience with ash fall in the past. It’s never been anything where we had to shut down the system or anything like that. There’s been instances of isolated arcs, where in fact ash did get into the system, but it was isolated to distinct spots,” he said.

The transmission line was brought back online by 10 a.m., and the system was fully restored by 10:40 a.m.

Other than that curve ball, the day went smoothly, Walden said. The school district was apprised of eruption activity and ash plume trajectory early in the morning, and decided by 5 a.m. to go ahead with school. All the communications systems and information releases came in and went out as expected. Mother Nature even cooperated, from the Kenai Peninsula’s perspective, in keeping a steady wind out of the northeast that spared the Kenai from ash fall.

It was a relatively undisastrous disaster, even for the areas that were directly affected, like the Susitna Valley. Ash fall was light, Walden said, probably lighter than the images people conjure up about it.

“A trace amount is under a millimeter. Medium ash fall is one to three millimeters. When you realize a trash bag is 10 millimeters, that’s not a lot of ash. If we got significantly dumped on, that might be as much as a dime,” he said.

Even small amounts of ash can be a big problem, though. If mixed with snow, ash can contribute to roof collapses and other weight-bearing issues. It’s a health risk if inhaled, especially for people with respiratory problems. It can turn roads into Slip ’n’ Slides and wreak havoc with delicate machinery and electronics.

That’s probably the biggest difference between this eruption and the last time Redoubt was active — the amount of electronics equipment in use.

“Even the grocery store, you don’t have someone who figures out your bill and gives you a receipt, it’s all electronic,” Walden said. “That kind of stuff needs to be looked at now, whereas 20 years ago it wasn’t a concern. Nowadays it’s vital.”

Other than the rash of calls during the blackout, the emergency center was relatively quiet, Walden said. People seemed to know how to get information and were already prepared in the event of an ash fall.

“We did a lot of public information before the eruption about what people should do, so when something like this occurs you don’t have people panicking,” Walden said.

People Outside seem more concerned about the eruptions than locals, Walden said, probably due to imaginations or sensationalized news coverage running wild.

“It’s just kind of an unusual situation to have a volcano in your backyard. The image of what a volcano does and what we’ve seen it actually do are two different things,” Walden said.

“For the most part people are pretty reasonable. They listen and don’t react too much to what cable television is telling them.”

Image courtesy of Game McGimsey, Alaska Volcano Observatory / U.S. Geological Survey
Flooding and tephra deposits — volcano-produced, airborne material that settles on the ground, churn down the Drift River Valley off Mount Redoubt after eruptions Monday.

Editorial: Peninsula scores passing marks for Redoubt round 1

OK, be honest now:

Who went to bed Sunday or woke up Monday thinking: “Gee, I really should have stocked up on water/air filters/flashlights/etc.” by now?

Consider this your warning.

Attention to Mount Redoubt wound down after months of activity without an eruption. Then, within a day, Redoubt decided to no longer be ignored.

The great news for the Kenai Peninsula is the ash plumes spurted out in the series of eruptions have missed us so far, and weather forecasts predict continued favorable wind patterns through Friday.

The good news is it appears as though, even if we had gotten some ash, the peninsula would have been more or less ready for it.

There were lines at some stores with people stocking up on last-minute emergency supplies, but Scott Walden, coordinator of the Kenai Peninsula Borough Office of Emergency Management, said all remained calm.

Even with what may be one of the most poorly timed coincidental power outages in the history of Homer Electric Association, Walden said he didn’t see or hear of any panic. Concern, yes, and a lot of phone calls to OEM and HEA, but people listened to explanations that the outage was not linked to the volcano, and went on about their day.

Walden credits preparedness with the peninsula’s response to Redoubt. OEM and other organizations have been spreading information on what to do if Redoubt erupts for months now.

Chances are, you’ve heard the message. But if you still have question needing to be answered or supplies needing to be prepared, now’s the time. Visit the OEM Web site for ash information, supply lists and other preparedness information, at www.borough.kenai.ak.us/emergency.