One could argue that fire-fighters should be paid more than Wall Street financial people .. flip side, of course, would be more lit deliberately, which begs a question re financial disasters .. oops, sorry, a conspiracy theorists feast.
Barring NATURAL disaster, Episode 2 tomorrow .. odds are pretty good .. hopefully .. :)
New Icelandic volcano eruption could have global impact
Video: Ford Cochran says that the 500 or so tremors in and around the caldera of Katla just in the last month suggest "an eruption may be imminent"
By Jane O'Brien BBC News, Reykjavik 1 December 2011 Last updated at 21:16 ET
Hundreds of metres under one of Iceland's largest glaciers there are signs of a looming volcanic eruption that could be one of the most powerful the country has seen in almost a century.
Mighty Katla, with its 10km (6.2 mile) crater, has the potential to cause catastrophic flooding as it melts the frozen surface of its caldera and sends billions of gallons of water surging through Iceland's east coast and into the Atlantic Ocean.
"There has been a great deal of seismic activity," says Ford Cochran, the National Geographic's expert on Iceland.
There were more than 500 tremors in and around the caldera of Katla just in October, which suggests the motion of magma.
"And that certainly suggests an eruption may be imminent."
Scientists in Iceland have been closely monitoring the area since 9 July, when there appears to have been some sort of disturbance that may have been a small eruption.
Eruption 'long overdue'?
Even that caused significant flooding, washing away a bridge across the country's main highway and blocking the only link to other parts of the island for several days.
"The 9 July event seems to mark the beginning of a new period of unrest for Katla, the fourth we know in the last half century," says Professor Pall Einarsson, who has been studying volcanoes for 40 years and works at the Iceland University Institute of Earth Sciences.
"The possibility that it may include a larger eruption cannot be excluded," he continues. "Katla is a very active and versatile volcano. It has a long history of large eruptions, some of which have caused considerable damage."
The last major eruption occurred in 1918 and caused such a large glacier meltdown that icebergs were swept into the ocean by the resulting floods.
The volume of water produced in a 1755 eruption equalled that of the world's largest rivers combined.
Thanks to the great works of historic literature known as the Sagas, Iceland's volcanic eruptions have been well documented for the last 1,000 years.
But comprehensive scientific measurements were not available in 1918, so volcanologists have no record of the type of seismic activity that led to that eruption.
All they know is that Katla usually erupts every 40 to 80 years, which suggests the next significant event is long overdue.
Eyjafjallajokull's relatively small eruption in 2010 halted air traffic across Europe
Katla is part of a volcanic zone that includes the Laki craters. In 1783 volcanoes in the area erupted continuously for eight months, generating so much ash, hydrogen fluoride and sulphur dioxide that it killed one in five Icelanders and half of the country's livestock.
"And it actually changed the Earth's climate," says Mr Cochran.
"Folks talk about a nuclear winter - this eruption generated enough sulphuric acid droplets that it made the atmosphere reflective, cooled the planet for an entire year or more and caused widespread famine in many places around the globe.
"One certainly hopes that Katla's eruption will not be anything like that!"
The trouble is scientists do not know what to expect. As Prof Einarsson explains, volcanoes have different personalities and are prone to changing their behaviour unexpectedly.
"When you study a volcano you get an idea about its behaviour in the same way you judge a person once you get to know them well.
"You might be on edge for some reason because the signs are strange or unusual, but it's not always very certain what you are looking at. We have had alarms about Katla several times."
Changing climate
He says the fallout also depends on the type of eruption and any number of external factors.
Iceland is the only place where the mid-Atlantic rift is visible above the surface of the ocean
"This difficulty is very apparent when you compare the last two eruptions in Iceland - Eyjafjallajokull in 2010 and Grimsvotn in 2011.
"Eyjafjallajokull, which brought air traffic to a halt across Europe, was a relatively small eruption, but the unusual chemistry of the magma, the long duration and the weather pattern during the eruption made it very disruptive.
"The Grimsvotn eruption of 2011 was much larger in terms of volume of erupted material.
"It only lasted a week and the ash in the atmosphere fell out relatively quickly.
"So it hardly had any noticeable effect except for the farmers in south-east Iceland who are still fighting the consequences."
Of course, volcanoes are erupting around the world continuously. Scientists are particularly excited about an underwater volcano near El Hierro in the Canary Islands, which is creating new land.
But Iceland is unique because it straddles two tectonic plates and is the only place in the world where the mid-Atlantic rift is visible above the surface of the ocean.
"It means you actually see the crust of the earth ripping apart," says Mr Cochran. "You have an immense amount of volcanic activity and seismic activity. It's also at a relatively high latitude so Iceland is host to among other things, the world's third-largest icecap."
But the biggest threat to Iceland's icecaps is seen as climate change, not the volcanoes that sometimes melt the icecaps.
They have begun to thin and retreat dramatically over the last few decades, contributing to the rise in sea levels that no eruption of Katla, however big, is likely to match.
Out of an estimated 1,500 active volcanoes around the world, 50 or so erupt every year, spewing steam, ash, toxic gases, and lava. In 2011, active volcanoes included Chile's Puyehue, Japan's Shinmoedake, Indonesia's Lokon, Iceland's Grímsvötn, Italy's Etna, and recently Nyamulagira in the Democratic Republic of Congo. In Hawaii, Kilauea continues to send lava flowing toward the sea, and the ocean floor has been erupting near the Canary Islands. Collected below are scenes from the wide variety of volcanic activity on Earth over the past year. [36 photos]
A cloud of ash billowing from Puyehue volcano near Osorno in southern Chile, 870 km south of Santiago, on June 5, 2011. Puyehue volcano erupted for the first time in half a century on June 4, 2011, prompting evacuations as it sent up a cloud of ash that circled the globe. (Claudio Santana/AFP/Getty Images)
4 Lava pours from from a fissure just after daybreak and cascades out of sight into a deep crack near the town of Volcano, Hawaii, on March 6, 2011. Scientists monitored a new vent that has opened at the Kilauea volcano, sending lava shooting up to 65 feet high. (AP Photo/US Geological Survey)#
5 Residents look at Mount Bulusan spewing ash in Sorsogon province, south of Manila, Philippines, in February 21, 2011. Mount Bulusan spewed a three-kilometer ash column covering several villages in the southwest. (Reuters/Stringer)#
6 Lightning cuts through an ash cloud as Shinmoedake peak erupts, as seen from Takaharu Town Office, Miyazaki prefecture, Japan, on January 27, 2011. (Reuters/Takaharu Town Office/Handout)#
13 Houses and trees are covered by volcanic ash on the bank of Nahuel Huapi Lake in Villa La Angostura in southern Argentina, on June 19, 2011, after the nearby eruption of the Puyehue-Cordon Caulle volcanic chain. (AP Photo/Federico Grosso)#
20 Mount Etna spews lava on the southern Italian island of Sicily, on August 6, 2011. Mount Etna is Europe's tallest and most active volcano. (Reuters/Antonio Parrinello)#
22 Park rangers and tourists stand near an erupting Mount Nyamulagira in eastern Congo, on Friday, November 11, 2011. Virunga National Park in Congo is inviting tourists on an overnight trek to view a spectacular eruption of Mount Nyamulagira, where rivers of incandescent lava are flowing slowly north into an uninhabited part of the park but pose no danger to its critically endangered mountain gorillas. (AP Photo/Virunga National Park, Cai Tjeenk Willink)#
25 Volcanic activity in the sea off the Canary island of El Hierro, seen in this aerial photo taken on November 5, 2011. The regional government of the Canary Islands ordered the evacuation of homes and road closures near the southern tip of El Hierro after two earth tremors and increased offshore volcanic activity caused a buildup of malodorous debris floating on the sea. Seismic activity began in the area on July 17 and residents have since been rocked by more than 10,000 tremors, while underwater fissures have released an almost continuous flow of sulfurous gases, smoke and hot debris. (AP Photo/Canary Islands Government)#
28 Tourists take a photo of a new volcanic eruption in Virunga National Park near Goma, on November 24, 2011. Almost three weeks after a fissure opened amidst dense flat forest, the Democratic Republic of Congo's Virunga National Park has seen an increasing number of tourists seeking to be guided on treks to witness the Nyamulagira volcano spewing geysers of lava into the night. Volcano fanatics will have to pay $300 (220 euros) to be escorted to a viewing site in the east of DR Congo, a country wracked by conflict and ranked the world's least developed by the United Nations. (Steve Terill/AFP/Getty Images)#
30 A peasant walks as the Tungurahua Volcano (background) spewes ash, in Cotalo, Ecuador, on November 29, 2011. Ecuador's Tungurahua volcano spewed red-hot rock and ash as officials upgraded their eruption warning level to orange and some at-risk communities began evacuations. (Pablo Cozzaglio/AFP/Getty Images)#
31 Tungurahua Volcano is seen from the town of Guadalupe, Ecuador, on November 28, 2011. (Pablo Cozzaglio/AFP/Getty Images)#
36 Tungurahua Volcano throws incandescent rocks and lava into the sky, seen from the nearby town of Runtun, Ecuador, on December 4, 2011. (Pablo Cozzaglio/AFP/Getty Images) #
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