Except for professional geologists who climb around on the crunchy cinders and sinewy lava slopes of volcanoes most of us would be unaware of the drama, excitement, danger and global significance of our planet’s volcanoes. That is until very recently.
Volcanoes are at the center of a new documentary film “Fire of Love 2022” which won the 2023, 95th Academy Awards. The film documents the lives and obsession of two French vulcanologists, Karla and Maurice Kraftt. The Kraftts, two determined and perhaps daredevil vulcanologists, followed and photographed volcanic eruptions around the world. The film follows the lives and professional work of the Kraftts and how they died in April 1991 while photographing the eruption of Mt Unzen, a steep, nearly 5,000 ft high composite cone located on the Shimabara Peninsula, east of Nagasaki, on one of Japan’s most southern islands.
The Kraftts and another geologist (Harry Glicken) had set their cameras at what they thought was a safe distance away from the actively erupting peak of Mt. Unzen. They set up their gear in the flow channel of a an earlier eruption close to a road about two miles from the belching, eruption at the summit of Unzen. They were not there long when a massive explosion at the peak released a cloud of hot gases, mixed with fine ash and lava. Much of this material was driven skyward to darken the sky. As the eruption proceeded, more hot gas (mostly steam and carbon dioxide gas) erupted and mixed intimately with fine ash rock fragments, and liquid spatter of molten lava to form a very hot (400 F to 1300 F) and very dense cloud, much heavier than air. This material poured like hot molasses from the vent and carried by gravity, swept down the the steep slope at high speed (@ 40-50 miles per hour) following channels on the slope which enveloped the vulcanologists . The massive cloud of poisonous, steam and burning hot dust cloud may have reached the site of the photographers in perhaps three minutes. The Kraftt’s camera kept photographing, and has provided us all with the first detailed evidence of this deadly form of volcanic activity. About 40 others also died further down the slope and in various lower locations. (The deadly cloud is known as a pyroclastic flow (“pyro”=fiery, plus, “clastic” = small broken pieces.)
The film is a tribute to the Kraftts. It should be seen to witness and understand one of the primal forces of nature. Vulcanism has been a major factor in the formation and evolution of our planet, it’s atmosphere and the diverse organisms which live on its surface. And they continue to do so. It was the release of these hot gases from the Earth’s interior which formed the planet’s early atmosphere. It has continued over the planet’s 4.5 billion year history…producing bursts of CO2 gas and water vapor which have altered and our plant’s temperature. Then too the dispersion of fine ash dispersed into the upper reaches of the atmosphere have operated to cool the planet too. Sometimes these eruptions of ash clouds have caused a following year of cold weather or “year with no summer”. But longer periods of cold conditions have been documented as a result of prolonged eruptions which may have helped to precipitate the several glacial periods which have punctuated the Earth’s long history..
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