Into the Inferno Page #2

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which is a very...

Well, do you sense differences

in the activity here with...?

Yeah, La Soufrire was very volatile.

It was all the way back in 1976

when I first filmed a volcano.

This was on the Caribbean island

of Guadeloupe.

The mountain was expected to explode

at any moment,

and 70,000 people

were rapidly evacuated.

The fear was intense

because of the memory of an event

that took on apocalyptic proportions.

It was known that, in 1902,

on the neighboring island of Martinique,

Mount Pele exploded.

The signals that La Soufrire

issued in Guadeloupe

were almost identical

to what had happened.

It was measured in 1902.

So, everybody was afraid

it would explode,

and it would explode

with very, very massive force,

many times an atomic bomb,

Hiroshima-size.

So, I was not interested in the volcano.

I was interested in one single man

who refused to be evacuated.

Uh-huh.

A different attitude towards death.

75 people...

75,000 people being evacuated,

and he stayed on.

I actually found him...

I find him sleeping.

I find him sleeping.

I had to wake him up on camera.

And what was wonderful...

he was very philosophical.

A very poor black farmer.

And I sensed that, after a while,

he didn't feel so comfortable

with us anymore,

and he sat up and started

to tie his worn-out tennis shoe.

And then, all of a sudden,

he sings a song against the camera,

and I knew that was that.

So, go away, we'd better get out.

We met in Antarctica

during the shoot

of Encounters at the End of the World,

and I knew a little bit about you.

I'd seen some of your movies

when I was a youngster,

and I knew something of your reputation.

And we, in our field team,

we were anxious that you were going

to have us propelled

down towards the lava lake.

There was some concern that you would be

looking for lengths of rope

with which we could be lowered down

within meters of this fiery lake

on Mount Erebus, volcano.

And instead, you were interested

in what we were doing

and why we were doing it.

For me, there is no personal excitement

to go down.

There's a curiosity.

Yes, I would love to see it from close up.

But since it is too dangerous,

it would be silly.

We have, in some ways, similar...

Um, you know, we both...

As a volcanologist,

of course, there's a risk

doing the measurements,

and you ask yourself, "Well, is it worth

dying to get this measurement?"

And the answer is no,

if you look at it in those terms.

But you're always trying to evaluate

how far you're going

to tolerate the risk.

I mean, even here,

the volcano could explode now

and we could all be hit

by one of these five-meter bombs.

I'm the only one in filmmaking

who is clinically sane,

- taking all precautions.

- That's very clear. Oh, absolutely.

I mean, you wouldn't still be here

if you were insane.

You would've been consumed long ago

by a pyroclastic current

or a gas flare or a grizzly bear

or whatever.

So, it's quite clear that you're sane.

I never doubted that for a moment

from our first encounter.

Deposited out from the volcanic gas.

Very nice.

- That's a good swoosh.

- Yeah, a good swoosh.

- We're very blas about all of this.

- Yes.

But let it come at us.

We'll face it and step aside.

We would often discuss

the life and work of a French couple,

Katia and Maurice Krafft.

They were famous for capturing

incredible images of volcanoes.

But this meant that they had to get

dangerously close to their subject.

Too close,

as it would eventually turn out.

They were both instantly killed

by a pyroclastic flow in Japan,

together with 41 other people.

This is the very avalanche

of super-heated gases that killed them.

What is rushing down this slope

at over 100 miles per hour

has a temperature

of more than 800 degrees Fahrenheit.

I spent a very formative part

of my youth in Indonesia.

I came to Toba

when I was 19 years old.

And actually, in Indonesia,

I feel like it's my second home.

I've come back

intermittently over the years,

but I immediately feel at home.

The smell of the kretek clove cigarettes,

the sights, the sounds.

It's a very special place to me.

And I think my career as a volcanologist

was partly formed from that first visit

as a 19-year-old.

Indonesia was the right place

for an aspiring scientist.

In fact, there's no country in the world

that has more volcanoes than this one.

Clive Oppenheimer took us

to Mount Sinabung.

It had been relatively quiet

the last few years.

The area we are shooting in right now

had been declared a restricted zone,

with no access allowed to anyone.

But, as we found farmers working there,

we felt reasonably safe.

Eerie relics remained, though,

from an eruption in 2010.

Feeling that this was

distant enough in time,

no one was expecting

what happened next.

Fortunately, this eruption

did not hurt anyone,

and we quickly left the area.

Only a few days later,

we saw this on Indonesian television.

Seven people were killed in the very spot

where we had had our camera.

In order to prevent such catastrophes,

Indonesia has set up

numerous early warning systems.

This is the Babadan Observatory,

which monitors Mount Merapi,

one of the most dangerous volcanoes

in the world.

And each of these stations

is a seismometer somewhere on Merapi,

a different distance,

five, six kilometers from the summit?

Yeah, that's true.

So, we have a summit station.

We have a short east station,

we have short station in Babadan Hill.

And also we have on the west of station.

And these real-time data provide

one of the most important parts

of a volcano-monitoring program

for assessing what the volcano is doing.

- It's the heartbeat of the volcano.

- Exactly.

This one is the electronic

distance measurements.

So, we have a reflector

in the summit of Merapi.

Then we're measuring every morning.

By this measuring,

we're plotting the cone.

So, it's measuring...

It's firing a laser pulse

to a mirror five, six kilometers away,

the light bounces back

and you've measured the distance.

And that can show

whether the volcano is inflating

because magma is rising

into the cone. Is that...

That's right. That's the idea for the

electronic distance measurements.

In a worst-case scenario,

I imagine the observer is at risk

if there's a pyroclastic flow.

If it's too late

for the observer to evacuate,

are there any options left?

Yeah, that's the emergency.

Then, if it is emergency,

we have a bunker.

It's a thick door.

- Yeah.

- After you.

We put the food and also oxygen.

We hope that they can survive

for one month.

It reminds me of the eruption

of Mount Pele in 1902

that killed nearly 30,000 people

in the city of Saint-Pierre

as the pyroclastic flows reached it.

And the only survivor lived

because he was the baddest guy in town.

He was a criminal.

I think he stabbed a prison officer

through the cheek with a pencil,

and he was put in solitary confinement

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