Perhaps the least damaging effect of the latest volcanic eruption in Iceland is the challenges it has posed for the tongues of the world’s broadcasters. Eyjafjallajökull (pronounced AY-ya-feeah-la-YOH-kuul) is a mouthful for all except the 320,000 people who live in the north Atlantic island. The name is made up of three words, roughly translated as “islands-mountains-glacier”. That is actually an accurate description, as the volcano is usually covered by one of the island’s smaller glaciers.

Aside from its location, Iceland is similar to the big island of Hawaii in the Pacific Ocean in that it was made by volcanic action and continues to be active. It is located directly above the Mid-Atlantic ridge, a huge geological feature running from the Arctic to the Antarctic and which is where the European and North Atlantic plates meet. As the plates spread apart, magma and other molten material spew from deep within the earth and cools as it hits the cold ocean water or the atmosphere.

Iceland is an example of a country which has made a kind of peace with the enormously powerful forces of the earth. The rivers fed by the glaciers which cover a significant portion of its surface provide hydro-electricity, while Icelanders drill wells into the hot zones and circulate the superheated water through pipes to heat their houses, their domestic water and even the streets and sidewalks, keeping them clear of snow and ice in the winter. The country has many geysers, including Geysir from which the English word is derived, as well as the famous Strokkur, which erupts every 5 – 10 minutes.

The eruption which is still going on has spewed out a plume of fine dust which we commonly call “ash”. It has coated the nearby countryside with a thick coating of dark grey dust which threatens plants about to begin their springtime sprouting.

Farmers have had to move their livestock indoors to protect them both from the dust which can quickly clog and corrode their lungs and wear their teeth away in no time flat if they graze outdoors. The cloud of lighter particles rose several kilometres into the atmosphere where the fast-moving jet stream wafted it over large swathes of western Europe.

This led European transport authorities to close their air space, leaving thousands of travellers stranded all over the place. Because airports like Heathrow in London, Amsterdam’s Schipol, de Gaulle and Orly in Paris, and those serving Frankfurt and Berlin are major interchanges, the suspension of flights affected airports as far away as Japan, China, India, South Africa and Australia.

Britons who bought cheap flights on economy carriers quickly found themselves having to fork out exorbitant sums to stay until they could find a way home. Europeans visiting the US or Canada had to bunk in impersonal and uncomfortable airports or find lodging with friends and family until whenever they could find a flight back home. Visitors to Europe found themselves stranded in expensive cities with resources dwindling fast.

The airlines – many of which live from day to day on the brink of financial disaster – nervously watched the dispersal of volcanic ash while working the calculators to figure out how much they were losing in foregone ticket sales. Some accountants put the loss so far at US$1.5 billion, and that’s just for the airlines alone. No flights also meant perishable food quickly disappeared from store shelves from London to Lübeck, and the people who make cheese in Italy or grow flowers and vegetables in Kenya have had to find others to buy up the produce they could not fly out every day.

It’s been almost impossible to find a seat on a train or inter-city bus all over Europe, and hotels are having a profitable time of it as stranded people have to find themselves a bed. Mourning Poles buried their president and his wife a week ago but without the presence of many dignitaries who couldn’t fly in.

Others from countries closer at hand drove for hours to pay their respects.

The chancellor of Germany who was returning home from a foreign trip had to divert to Portugal, which was unaffected by the ash fall, and drive the final 1000 kilometres home.

The problem with ash is that it consists of extremely fine particles of abrasive volcanic rock, which, like sandpaper, can grind any surface it bounces against. Pilots flying through such clouds have in some cases found the aircraft’s windshield reduced to opacity in a matter of minutes.

More scary is that the cloud of dust can choke the jet engines which gulp enormous quantities of air as they claw their way through the atmosphere. The high temperature in the engines’ combustion chambers tends to fuse the dust particles into a kind of glass coating which gums up the finely machined parts at the core of the engine. That’s why airline technical bosses as well as the boffins at the European air space control establishment closed air space. This week, several airlines sent out empty planes on test flights to see if the ash cloud would do any damage, but reported none.

The first time I heard of this phenomenon was in the early 1980s when a British Airways jumbo flying over Indonesia at night suddenly lost all four engines while the cabin suddenly filled with what appeared to be smoke. The flight crew could not figure out what caused the engines to quit, as the instruments had given no indication of trouble. The captain began descending and preparing to ditch the plane at sea, a manoeuvre very rarely called for, but the descent to lower levels blew the dust out of the engines and the flight engineer was able to

restart them.

Now, as the airlines tackle the unenviable task of clearing up the backlog of stranded passengers all over the world, the finger-pointing and accusations have begun. The legal departments are trying to figure out whether they can launch lawsuits, and then whom to sue for the losses they have accumulated while the flights were suspended.

Travellers are seeking to recoup the unexpected sums they had to load on to their credit cards while they cooled their heels in foreign parts. And organisations everywhere are frantically trying to reschedule meetings and events which had to be cancelled because of no-shows.

I can never understand the mindset which motivates people to require payment for things beyond the control of mankind. People who believe governments should stay out of business are the first to lean heavily on governments for compensation when nature behaves naturally. People who dash off seeking pleasure in exotic locations without a second thought expect someone else to pay up when things get fouled up.

Even those of us who live in the poorer countries have become accustomed to over-riding nature and flit off to wherever we want to go whenever we want to. But when the earth rumbles, as it did recently in Haiti and Chile, vomits up molten contents as it frequently does in Indonesia, Hawaii, the Philippines or Iceland, or churns up the air and ocean as it does regularly in the Caribbean, we are reminded once again that we are merely little creatures inhabiting a niche in the geosystem on the good graces of nature.

keeble.mack@sympatico.ca