Aftermath of ancient eruption offers lessons in adapting to disaster
By Matt Crenson
It had to be an awesome sight. The fountain of fire would have been visible for dozens of miles around; the pillar of smoke could have been seen for hundreds of miles. Ash and steam would have generated fearsome thunder and lightning. Forests would have been set ablaze. Anybody in the Southwest who didn’t directly witness the Sunset Crater eruption definitely would have heard about it.
Sometime around 1085, a fissure opened up in the ground about 50 miles southeast of the Grand Canyon. A curtain of fire hundreds of meters high emerged from the crack, spreading lava across the landscape and shooting ash into the sky. Within a few weeks or months at most, the eruption had built a 300-meter-high cratered peak and buried 265 square kilometers of prime farmland under a foot or more of volcanic debris.