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Providing coverage of Alaska and northern Canada's oil and gas industry
April 2009

Vol. 14, No. 14 Week of April 05, 2009

Could there be a cataclysmic explosion?

Explosive style eruptions caused by pressure building under relatively viscous magma characterize the Redoubt and Mount Spurr volcanoes on the west side of Alaska’s Cook Inlet. So, could the current activity at Redoubt develop into a cataclysmic explosion, like Krakatoa or the Mount St. Helens eruption in Washington state? Geologists believe that the summit caldera on Mount Spurr resulted from a Mount St. Helens-style explosion as recently as around 11,000 years ago.

Redoubt Volcano has never erupted as violently as that, John Power, a research geophysicist with the Alaska Volcano Observatory, said during a press conference March 31.

“There is a lot of overriding evidence that large eruptions such as … Krakatoa … were all preceded by very, very large earthquakes,” Power said. “… We’ve seen nothing like that currently at Redoubt. There’s no indication currently from our seismic monitoring that a larger event may be afoot.”






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