Century on the edge

By PETER SUR

Tribune-Herald staff writer

Hawaiian Volcano Observatory — Thomas Augustus Jaggar Jr. was 40 years old and a witness to the horrors of volcanoes when he stepped off the boat in Hilo on Jan. 17, 1912. By that afternoon, he was at Kilauea volcano, surveying elevations and mapping the lava lake.

Science has kept a close eye on Madame Pele ever since.

The Hawaiian Volcano Observatory, perched on the rim of Kilauea Caldera, is 100 years old, thanks to Jaggar’s efforts. But he wasn’t alone. A supporting cast of characters from little-known Frank Perret to current scientist-in-charge Jim Kauahikaua have led the observatory. HVO is celebrating with a host of programs for the third annual Volcano Awareness Month, with guided hikes and public lectures.

Jaggar, a balding man with thick eyebrows, was a spellbinding public speaker and a man of enormous energy. He wore a necktie or bow tie, a white shirt, pants and calf-high boots, whether in the field or in the office. The son of an Episcopalian bishop, he earned a doctorate in geology from Harvard University. In 1902, he was sent to the island of Martinique, 13 days after the devastating eruption of Mount Pelee killed 30,000 people.

The tragedy left a deep impression on Jaggar. At a time when volcano science involved after-the-fact interviews with survivors, “he thought that was relatively unproductive,” Kauahikaua said.

Jaggar believed an established observatory could monitor volcanoes and forecast eruptions and earthquakes. On one such journey in 1909 to study seismic observatories in Japan, Jaggar, then teaching at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, stopped in Hawaii and visited Kilauea volcano for the first time. He also visited Honolulu, where he gave a lecture on his experiences and floated the idea of establishing a geological observatory at Kilauea.

Lorrin Thurston of the Pacific Commercial Advertiser pledged his help, and within a year Thurston had formed the Hawaii Volcano Research Association to raise money for the venture. Its motto, translated from Latin, declared: “No more shall the cities be destroyed.”

Jaggar couldn’t move to Hawaii immediately, but in early 1911 he convinced volcanologist Perret and high-temperature expert E.S. Shepherd to begin research at the volcano. Perret built a hut on the edge of Halema’uma’u and began reporting his findings that summer. As the Hawaii Herald newspaper reported in 1912:

“Professor Perret and Doctor Shepherd sat in constant attendance upon the sputtering crater and watched every movement of the boiling lava. From there Professor Perret made daily and nightly observations, took the temperature of the lake, felt Madam Pele’s pulse, measured the contortions of the column of molten lava, and photographed it day and night. Professor Perret found that this previous conclusions that volcanic eruptions and earthquakes follow natural laws had been sustained.”

Two days after Jaggar arrived at the volcano, he granted an interview to the Herald’s competitor, the Hilo Tribune:

“It is my plan to continue to use the hut erected by Perret at the edge of the pit as an observatory, but in addition to this we must have a permanent laboratory, which will be located either by the Volcano House or on the Uwekahuna bluff, in which the instruments can be kept and where laboratory work can be done,” he said. He had to leave six weeks later for a family emergency, but left a deputy in charge of observations and returned to Kilauea that summer.

In 1919, the federal government took over the volcano observatory, which bounced around several agencies until the U.S. Geological Survey became its permanent administrator in 1947. Except for the period between 1935 and 1947, HVO has been independent of the National Park Service.

There are four other USGS observatories, keeping tabs on volcanoes in Alaska, the Cascades, the Yellowstone Caldera and California’s Long Valley Caldera.

Jaggar’s observatory found its first home near the site of the Volcano House hotel, where it stood until it was razed in 1940 to make way for the hotel’s expansion. In 1942, HVO moved to the site of the current Kilauea Visitor Center.

Then, in 1948, HVO moved near its current location on Uwekahuna Bluff. The construction of two larger office buildings in 1961 and 1985, allowed the observatory to return building space to the National Park Service, which dedicated the Thomas A. Jaggar Museum on HVO’s 75th anniversary in 1987.

Jaggar retired from HVO in 1940 and moved to Honolulu, where he taught at the University of Hawaii and wrote his memoirs. He died Jan. 17, 1953 — 41 years to the day after he arrived on the Big Island.

It fell to future directors to take advantage of new scientific tools and theories about why volcanoes act the way they do.

Jerry Eaton, the seismologist who led HVO in the mid-’50s and early 1960s, developed the first true seismic network. He replaced the old mechanical seismometers with electromagnetic devices, installing five of them across the island and on Maui.

“Now we have on the order of 55 seismometers with 250-plus components,” Kauahikaua said. Eaton installed a water-based tilt-measuring system which was so sensitive the technology is still used today to detect minuscule changes in the volcano’s surface in response to magma movements.

In the 1990s, under scientist-in-charge David Clague, HVO began using the first of about 60 GPS markers to chart the swelling volcano. But geologists are finding new ways to track volcanoes.

Today they use satellite-based radio interferometry techniques and sensitive gravimeters to track ground deformation and gas spectroscopy to determine the chemical composition of elements.

The launch of the HVO website and the issuing of daily updates began under the tenure of Don Swanson. He was followed in 2004 by the 19th chief scientist, Kauahikaua.

In 2009, HVO received $3.2 million in federal stimulus money, which was used to upgrade monitoring equipment.

After all those technological advances, in some ways the ongoing eruption resembles that of 100 years ago. In 1912 and today, a long-lived lava lake persists at Halema’uma’u. The main difference is that today’s lava lake has not spilled onto the crater floor. Why?

“The easy answer is that we have an East Rift Zone eruption,” said geologist Matt Patrick. The eruption acts as a “pressure relief valve” to keep the level of the lava lake down.

Geologists have figured out many of Kilauea’s secrets, but some remain elusive. Earthquake prediction science remains imprecise. The 2008 explosive eruption took everybody by surprise, as did the recent lava outbreaks in 2011 near Pu’u ‘O’o.

Kauahikaua laughed when asked what Kilauea will do next.

“Good question,” he said. “It’s been real stable for a long time now.”

Until it isn’t.

On the Internet: http://hvo.wr.usgs.gov.

Email Peter Sur at psur@hawaiitribune-herald.com.