What did it take to become a volcanologist? What kind of training did it take, starting in high school? Did you even know in high school that you were going to be a scientist, a geologist?

In high school I was interested in astronomy, sort-of "back yard" science, but I don’t think I really took a science track. I would have been in the academic track. I was pointed toward college, I was not necessarily pointed toward graduate school, I just wasn’t thinking that far ahead. In college, it turned out where I went, astronomy wasn’t viable but geology was. I had a great geology one instructor. But as far as volcanology is concerned, it was simply the accident of being assigned or asked if I wanted to join the HVO (Hawaiian Volcano Observatory) staff in 1964. I had no idea the U.S. Geological Survey had a volcano observatory. I had taken a job in Washington DC out of graduate school, when I finished at John Hopkins, simply because that put me close to people whose interest matched mine in igneous petrology.

So you were trained as a geologist?

I had a geology degree. I had no particular volcanology background.

You were an igneous petrologist?

Yes, an igneous petrologist. I happened to do my dissertation at Mt. Rainier on the shallow plutonic rocks that underlie the mountain, but I had no formal training in volcanology. So it was really the place in Hawaii that was a career defining experience and there was no preparation or "aiming toward" that sort of thing.

What about the hazard work you did? It seems that, while we’re trained in the science of volcanology in school, we don’t really have any training in understanding and dealing with hazards and their impact on people. How did you get any kind of training in assessing hazards?

Again, it was completely on the job. When I went back to Hawaii as the Scientist-in-Charge, I had seen enough eruptions in the earlier period and had a general idea of what needed to be done to make communication with the National Park Service (the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory is in Hawaii Volcanoes National Park) and with the Civil Defense Agency a priority. It really paid off. For instance Christina Heliker came on staff about the same time I did. I worked her into the hazard area because I figured we needed someone on the permanent staff, who could be the interface so the Civil Defense and the Park wouldn’t have to start everything from scratch each time the Scientist-in-Charge changed. That was very successful.

So that would be one of the things that, as a scientist working in the field of geologic hazards, you would feel would be very important to establish, a line of communication between the different agencies involved.

And it goes very broadly to the ability to communicate simply, verbally and in writing, what the situation with regard to the volcano. You can’t go at it from an arcane research scientist point-of-view and expect the people who are responsible for public safety to get what it’s about.

We don’t all learn how to present our ideas, our thoughts, and our science in a clear and articulate manner.

I had an early experience which was very important to me. In the 60’s, I was Acting-Scientist-in-Charge. Howard Powers (Scientist-in-Charge of HVO, 1964-1970) believed rotating the responsibility randomly amongst the professional staff. So it was my turn to be Scientist-in-Charge and it happened to be the beginning of the long Halemaumau eruption in November 1967. I was suddenly thrown into the situation where I had to deal with the Park officials and with the press. That was a very good experience. We devised a system where we had a short written press release by each phone, so that anyone who answered the phone could give out the same information. So they didn’t have to buck everything to me or have inconsistent information coming because the person in charge wasn’t available. Things like that occur to you when you’re in a situation like that. By the time I came back to HVO as the Scientist-in-Charge, I had a very clear idea of what needed to be done. And the Kalapana Crisis was absolutely an on-going, very successful relationship between Hawaii County Civil Defense Agency and the Observatory.

Aerial view of lava advancing through Kalapana Village in May 1990. By September 1990, lava flows from Kilauea Volcano had covered most of the town. Photo by J. D. Griggs, USGS, Hawaiian Volcano Observatory.

Do you want to talk about Kalapana and tell our readers a bit about that whole situation? What was it like to be involved with the whole Kalapana Crisis...for yourself personally, not necessarily as the Scientist-in-Charge.

A little bit of background. The eruption of Kilauea began in 1983 and up to the summer of 1986 there were almost monthly high fountaining events that lasted no more than 60 hours. Those sent flows occasionally down into populated areas, Royal Gardens mainly, and destroyed a few houses and there had to be evacuations. I came on staff in the early part of that. In 1986, the vent abruptly shifted down-rift and started continuous activity and what became Kupaianaha, with a lava lake at the source and then tube-fed pahoehoe lava flows developing out of that. That was a much more hazardous situation because of the longevity, although we didn’t necessarily know that at the beginning. But when flows really started going downhill and the eruption didn’t seem inclined to stop, then is was when the consciousness was raised. The community of Kapa`ahu was the first to be impacted. There was a row of houses along the main road but otherwise it was a scattered populated area and those got entirely destroyed because the flows made it all the way to the ocean at that point so they went through that entire area. That alerted us to the real danger in an eruption that would send flows all the way to the coast. Later, in 1987, there was a flow that went farther east and actually came into the upper part of Kalapana Gardens which is a much more densely populated and more modern settlement than Kapa`ahu which was still a largely Hawaiian population. That particular flow came in and destroyed several houses and stopped. In 1990, flows swept through the entire new Kalapana Gardens subdivision and through the entire Kalapana village, which was a Hawaiian settlement, and, as their last act, filled Kaimu Bay. The bay was not only a surfing locality and a well known black sand beach but a very traditional part of the Hawaiian coastline. So through that whole process we had basically 24-hour monitoring and daily briefings of the Civil Defense Agency and as a result of that, they never evacuated the entire area, or even large parts of it, it was basically a timed evacuation where people were only asked to evacuate when it was felt that their houses were in imminent danger.

And this was to allow people more time to spend in their homes?

Yes, and in the hope that maybe something would stop. You may have remembered, I witnessed your parent’s home finally consumed, that was toward the latter part of the Kalapana Gardens phase.

Lava flows from Kilauea burn a home in Kalapana. 4/22/90. Photo by J. D. Griggs, USGS, Hawaiian Volcano Observatory.

As Scientist-in-Charge, what was the most important goal for you to achieve during that crisis? What was the most important thing that you felt HVO had to accomplish during that crisis?

Well, it really had everything to do with the good communication with the Civil Defense agency, so that there would be no chance of loss of life. There were some close calls on loss of possessions still in houses. Another interesting thing, Tari, that was going on ... and if I seem to be emotional about this it is because it was, in so many ways, very sad time ... to see everything go. The staff, Ken Hon and Jim Kauahikaua, while they were part of our daily monitoring, they were also studying the pahoehoe flows and how this tube-fed pahoehoe actually moved and they were getting a good understanding of things that we called "surges". The surges tended to occur when there was a little increase in topography and the surges are what produced instances where people were just barely getting stuff out of their houses.

So the flows would suddenly move very fast.

Right, faster than normal. So we were a couple times caught with our 24 or 12-hour projections being short of what actually happened (HVO geologists gave projections of lava flow advance to the Hawaii County Civil Defense Agency throughout the Kalapana crisis). But, again, those did not threaten people’s lives, it just made it a close call for people to get everything out.

Children watch lava flows from Kilauea move into their neighborhood. Kalapana 4/22/90.Photo by J. D. Griggs, USGS, Hawaiian Volcano Observatory.

That was, for me, the hardest thing, seeing an entire community buried. It seemed that many people in the community started sharing their memories of the area with outsiders, for perhaps the first time. Did you have any of those experiences, a sharing of memories so that the whole community would remember Kalapana?

I certainly talked to some of the local people and encountered the Hawaiian "fatalism," the acceptance that this was something that happens and I think that was different from some of the Kalapana Gardens community who were not brought up in that culture. I knew also one family, the Hauanio family, from my earlier time in Hawaii and they were impacted, they were in the area. The youngest son was a boy of eight at the time, he was called "boy," and he was working with the Park Service during the Kalapana crisis.

Thelma lived in a house that was destroyed. I think the parents, their house was also destroyed. It was very moving for me to talk to them because it made a connection. It was one connection that I’d had earlier with the truly indigenous community. The father was in the Park Service at that time and we went down to their house on one occasion. And so then to come back and see all these people 20 years later where they had literally their backs to the wall with their land and property getting covered was quite something. They were very friendly and recognized me, and I had mixed feelings - the pleasure of seeing them again, but within such a terrible circumstance for them.

It was and interesting time, I was going back to explore my roots and to be discovering my roots and getting to know my Hawaiian relatives and the Hawaiian community that my relatives lived in as it was being covered by lava flows was a profoundly difficult situation for me. But when I look back at that time I think a lot of the gifts that we got from the people there. People kind of opened their hearts to you...

It was important for me to have you on staff not only as a scientist but also to have that personal connection. Because a place like Hawaii, when you run a government agency, particularly one that’s involved with the type of work we were doing, I think it makes a real difference to have someone that is acquainted with the community in a direct way.

I agree. In general, people view scientists as very, very remote. They don’t realize that scientists are real human beings. We get into these intense situations and suddenly they realize, "this person is helping me." In some ways it’s difficult as a scientist because you feel almost impotent. You can’t do anything to stop this lava flow all you can do is give them the best information. I would imagine as Scientist-in-Charge you probably felt it even more than the rest of us. It would be frustrating. Even with all the technology behind us, you couldn’t do anything to stop this.

It’s good in that respect to have a population who isn’t asking, isn’t expecting. They had a real respect for nature and this is part of nature, part of what happens.

That was a very important difference and one you mentioned earlier, and that is the difference in thinking between people from the mainland or those who may not have been brought up in the Hawaiian culture and the Hawaiian people.

It was sometimes kind of subtle, it wasn’t glaring. But to a person in Hawaiian families, I was amazed at how accepting they were to see everything destroyed. I remember Louis Pau, one of the first families to lose their home in Kapaahu, was marveling to me about how an ancient grave site was spared. Hawaiian graves that were raised just enough that the surrounding flow went around. That to him had to do with Hawaiian mana. To me that was really strange because I thought, I didn’t ever say this, but I thought "here you and all your contemporaries are losing everything and you’re exulting about the preservation of your ancestors". That was not something that I thought much about.

Lava flows move up to old lava bench and table in Harry K. Brown Park, Kalapana. 5/6/90. Photo by J. D. Griggs, USGS, Hawaiian Volcano Observatory.

You mentioned earlier "Hawaiian fatalism" and I think some of our readers might not understand that that is not necessarily a negative thing. It was an openness to the idea that things do end and things do change and Hawaiians living on an active volcano understand that that is how the land was formed in the first place. I know a lot of my aunts and uncles said to me during the eruption, "well, she’s taking the land back now." "She gave it to us and she takes it back." And the cycle continues, people move back again. It was not so much being fatalistic as saying this is how nature works. Especially nature in Hawaii!

Well, John McPhee has a book called The Control of Nature which is a series of three stories about various attempts to do just that. Our culture is very much attuned to that, of trying to deal with hazards by supposedly eliminating them, whether it be damming rivers or erecting barriers of various sorts to landslides and so forth and yet I personally think it’s often very counterproductive. You have to have a really clear idea of the tradeoffs that you’re going to get by trying to disrupt a natural process. I think it’s certainly happened in river systems, in some cases it’s been identified that there’s worse flooding because of Man’s intervention than might not have been the case had it been left alone.

It might stop the problem temporarily but you might have a worse situation down the road.

Yes.

Well, we’ve talked a bit about what you’ve done in the past and I was wondering if you’d like to share with us a bit about what you’re doing now and what you see as your role as a scientist.

Well, to put it in context I suppose it starts with the fact that I was RIFed and that was the greatest insult that I think one can imagine in a career when I had been devoted all out to the agency for 30 some years and doing what I felt was expected of me and doing it well and to have nothing count (in the end). That was a very distressing experience to realize that I was expendable. In the aftermath of that I became truly, from an institution’s point-of-view, "marginal-ized" as a scientist. In-other-words, I was not in the aftermath of the RIF, nor would I be called on now, to deliver expert opinion on anything from the Geological Survey as an organization. That is contrasted with certain individuals within the Geological Survey who have always recognized my value. I continued doing the research I was involved in at the time of the RIF and intended to complete the understanding that I was getting of Kilauea. The ultimate goal is a book about Kilauea Volcano that I would like to write with Dick Fiske. This drove me through that process. I chose to work that rather than hire lawyers as other people did. I did all that I could in the months between when I was told I was RIFed and the actual RIF. I found that merit didn’t count and that’s the only basis on which I cared to make an argument.

A couple years ago, I was in the new geology hall that just opened at the Smithsonian and this woman came up to me and started asking me a lot of questions about volcanology and it turned out she was part of an organization I didn’t know about at the Smithsonian called the National Science Resources Center. Their mandate is to develop K-12 educational curricula in line with standards for secondary school science that were published maybe five or more years ago by the National Academy of Science. They call it "inquiry-based" science and there are a lot on hands-on classroom activities. She asked me if I would be interested in attending a meeting where there was feedback on one of these educational modules and I did. It turned out that she was just beginning to write something for junior high school on natural hazards, focusing on weather, earthquakes, and volcanoes. She asked if I would want to be involved as a consultant on the earthquake and volcanoes part and I said yes. That’s turned out to be one of the most satisfying things I’ve ever done. I since have gotten into another consulting position with an editor from Reader’s Digest who’s publishing a children’s book on earthquakes and volcanoes. I’ve had a great deal of fun and education of myself in being a resource for these people. That is, I go on the web and I look at different web sites, I’m on the lookout for different articles that are of interest. I read textbooks so that I can look at different ways of presenting geologic information in these areas. I’ve brokered meetings between Carol O’Donnell, the person with National Science Resources Center, and Katherine Johnson, who is the outreach coordinator for IRIS (a worldwide consortium that also manages the worldwide seismic network). Bringing the two of them together, two people who have absolutely the same kind of enthusiasm and focus on education, was very successful.

Well, it’s nice for people to have you as a resource and learn from your experience.

Again, all of this stuff feeds very positively into this book project, in the sense that in writing a book, at whatever level, it’s got to be understandable. The simpler one can make it, the clearer, the better. This gives me practice in reviewing curricula, in reviewing layouts, or helping educators understand the important things regarding volcanoes and earthquakes, the hazards they pose, hazard mitigation, the whole spectrum. This work can’t help but contribute positively to my ability to present an understanding of Kilauea in a book form.

Is there anything else you’d like to say about working as a volcanologist?

There is a really necessary and intimate relationship which I think is being lost, the relationship between research and the very practical things that we’re asked to do, like hazard evaluation. I mentioned the example of research on how pahoehoe flows move going on at the same time during the Kalapana crisis. In a much broader sense there is no addressing of earthquake hazard or volcano hazard that doesn’t involve a lot of research in the understanding of how earthquakes work, how plate motions go, rock properties, and how things like viscosity and vesiculation are involved with eruptions. I think it has always being lost to the public and agencies and managers often just let themselves lapse into an "either-or" mode and just don’t keep focused on the fact that all of this stuff is necessary. In an organization that is dedicated to dealing with hazards you may well have people who are doing just inquiry-based research that has no immediate application and there are other people who are either responsible for transmitting information or have come to the point where they can identify some specific applications and that’s fine. But you’ve got to really accept the whole spectrum of people.

So one of the things you’re saying is that there is a huge amount of research that goes into our understanding of the volcano and all of it is relevant.

Right. I feel that as a research scientist I have a built-in advantage in talking to kids or talking to elder-hostel people, because research scientists know more than it is ever relevant to present and we can think at several different levels in our answers. The level at which of course you respond has to be appropriate for the audience. If you know all the research that went into your answer at different levels I think it makes for a much more effective communication than if you try to brief somebody with no research background to be a spokesperson. Then all their information is secondary in effect and they can’t back it up if a question comes that isn’t within their briefing, they might not be able to deal with it, whereas people who have had a lot of experience can.

Well, we thank you for sharing your experience and taking the time to answer our questions. Good luck with your work here.